


July

by SolarMorrigan



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: A little angst, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, It's mostly 00Q, M/M, Some hurt/comfort, Stream of Consciousness, appropriate warnings on each chapter, mixed bag of AU's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 20:20:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 33
Words: 38,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15127106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolarMorrigan/pseuds/SolarMorrigan
Summary: Repository for all my 007 Fest works. See each chapter for more detailed descriptions!





	1. Curses, Q/Tanner

**Author's Note:**

> Pairing: Q/Tanner  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: "Curses" for the General Prompt Table  
> I don't know anything about Shakespeare and I pulled all the quotes off a list. I'm sorry in advance

He wasn’t really doing in on purpose; he didn’t need to sound like any _more_ of a posh twat, after all. It was just – well, the Bard was just very catchy.

Q hadn’t paid Shakespeare a great deal of attention in school; the plays had been interesting enough, but not relevant to his interests, and so he’d relegated them to the back of his mind until Bill Tanner happened.

Bill Tanner, who was the sort of person who didn’t seem to belong at the top of an international spy agency food chain, who was calm and affable and even kind, who was loyal and willing to help, but who could most certainly become cold and hard and determined when the situation called for it. Tanner, who remembered to bring Q food when he spent long shifts down in Q branch, and who would sit and eat with him and make sure he had some measure of human contact, and who would continue sitting with him even though his shift was well over and he could have been at home but was instead just talking to Q. Tanner, who came to visit Q regularly when he moved the entirety of Q branch to a new, highly inconvenient location, and who was interested in Q’s projects, and who liked to watch him work.

Tanner, who apparently loved Shakespeare.

And Q just wanted to have something a little more in common with him, a little more to talk about. It was lovely when Tanner let him babble on about his work, but it felt a little one-sided at times. But Q knew Tanner loved Shakespeare, so he bought himself the collected plays and got to work.

It wasn’t difficult to understand them, nor to memorize them; his memory was eidetic, and what he read, he remembered. No, the trouble wasn’t digesting Shakespeare, it was what happened afterwards.

“You poisonous bunch-backed _toad_.”

“Excuse me?”

Q’s head snapped up, and he realized that he had, in fact, hissed that curse _out loud_ as he was typing. And Tanner was standing right there. With food.

“Nothing.” Q shook his head quickly, “Just getting frustrated with this program.”

Tanner nodded sagely, giving Q a hopeful little smile and lifting the bag of takeaway in his hand. “Good time to break for dinner, then?”

Q didn’t have to think long. The program would still be there to frustrate him after he sat down to a good meal (or even a substandard meal, as long as the company was as good as it always was).

After that, they just kept slipping out. He sent 005 out of his office after hearing the man’s excuses for his missing equipment and caught himself muttering, “More of your conversation would infect my brain.”

Tanner, who had drawn the short straw and been by to remind 005 to do his post-mission paperwork, had snorted inelegantly and left Q’s office with a grin.

When looking over a mission dossier Tanner had brought by with lunch, Q had proclaimed the target of the mission unfit for any place but hell, which had Tanner nodding in bemused agreement.

A particularly frustrating bug was dubbed a lump of foul deformity, Bond became a damned and luxurious mountain goat for one very trying evening, and Q had Tanner cracking up by the time he was raging in his office over a meeting gone sour and cursing M as “whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter” (altogether a more literal meaning than was meant to be taken from its source, but it just fit _so well_ ).

“I had no idea you were such a fan of Shakespeare.” Tanner chuckled.

“I’m not.” Q huffed, dropping down into his chair.

Tanner’s expression fell a bit, something like confused or disappointed. “Oh. I just thought…”

“Oh, no, I only meant–” Q scrambled, wondering if there was any way he would come out of this not sounding creepy, “Well, no, I’m not a huge fan, but you are, and I… just sort of brushed up on his works so we’d… so we could talk more. I suppose it just stuck a bit more than I realized.”

It was a deliberate downplay, Q knew full well he remembered every word he’d read, but there was no need to come off any weirder than he already had, and Tanner’s face was doing something else now that Q couldn’t quite decipher, not that he’d ever been very good with facial expressions, but – “Would you like to get dinner sometime, Q?”

Q blinked. He opened his mouth, and Tanner quickly added: “A date. Would you like to go on a date?”, rightly assuming that Q had been about to point out that they had dinner together frequently.

Q suddenly couldn’t think. Was there some Shakespearean reference he could make here? Would that even be appropriate? “Yes.” He settled on, finally, “I would like that very much.”

Tanner grinned then – and that, at least, Q understood perfectly.


	2. Platonic Touching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: Q and Moneypenny friendship  
> Warnings: None, really  
> Prompts: "Platonic Touching" for the Fluff Prompt Table  
> Very short fill with some Q/Moneypenny friendship and more touch-starved Q because I can't stop, apparently

Moneypenny finds him at his desk. It’s been a long day. And a bad day. A long, bad day full of bad things that were very long. Or something. Q isn’t at his best at the moment; he’s wrung out and bled dry and other analogies that end with him being pretty much _done_. So he’s not really inclined to get up from his chair and leave his office and find a way home. He’d rather just sit there and maybe expire, thank you very much.

Moneypenny’s not having any of that, though, because even though she doesn’t have a mothering bone in her body, she does have that strange instinct that most field agents have that makes her want to help people in the gruffest way possible. ‘Gruff’ isn’t necessarily the adjective to apply to Moneypenny, who’s all sleek lines and smooth motion, but neither is ‘nice’ quite the word as she puts a hand on his arm and basically hauls him out of his chair.

She’s already marched him halfway to his office door before she realizes that he’s shaking. And he wants to die a little, but he also wants her to _stay_ , because he can’t remember the last time someone pulled him this close and just _held on_ , and God it feels good. (It’s also a little too much, a little more than he remembers how to stand, which is why he’s shaking, which is why he’s so embarrassed he kind of wants the floor to swallow him up, and maybe he could work on a way of making that happen, but not right now, God he’s _tired._ ) It seems like she might take her arm from around his shoulders, like she might step back, so Q takes a chance – a desperate chance that this is okay, and reaches up and links his arm around her waist (high up on her waist, somewhere he really hopes is appropriate, he doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable, he would _never_ ).

They stand there for a moment, and it’s awkward, and Q feels sort of bad for imposing all of this awkwardness on her, and he’s about to let go, but then she sort of – sort of smiles? One of those strange smiles that isn’t really a smile, it’s sort of sad, sort of confusing, but there’s no other way to describe it. So she sort-of-smiles and tightens her arm around his shoulders and doesn’t make him move his arm from around her waist and tells him he’s just lazy and that she’ll give him a ride home if he won’t find his own way there.

When they reach his block, she reaches over and puts her hand on his forearm and squeezes it. Smiles at him again, but more of a real one. And he’s tired and fuzzy, but he’s pretty sure he smiles back.


	3. Affair, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: Bond/Q, past Q/OMC  
> Warnings: Infidelity (not between Q and Bond), mentions of sexual acts  
> Prompts: None  
> A headcanon gone wild. Stream of consciousness again

Q absolutely had an affair with one of his professors at university and you can’t convince me otherwise.

The whole sordid story (and it was sordid, honestly, the stuff of dramas, minus the part where people found out and it became a scandal, because they were both too good to do something as stupid as get caught while doing something as stupid as shagging each other stupid at every opportunity) comes tumbling out to Bond one evening during a conversation about previous trysts in which Bond has many tales and Q has what feels like embarrassingly few until he finally admits that he’s not as goddamn old as Bond, alright, and he was busy with school and then work and also he was fucking one of his professors for over a year and it was a terrible idea all around, so yes.

And word vomit like that can really only be followed up by the tale of the affair in question and, well – why not? Q has more than enough dirt on Bond; seems fair to reciprocate a little.

So, look, Bond _knows_ how Q has a thing for older men (not that that’s why he and Q are together, but Q has admitted that it’s an absolute perk, and really it’s very hard to feel insecure about the grey hair you’re growing when your younger partner all but _purrs_ over it and then sucks you off right in front of the bedroom mirror, so Bond’s not feeling too badly about that particular proclivity of Q’s, either) and his professor was – well, obviously he was older, Q was only 18 (yes, 18, no really, yes, he was on his second degree already, yes, Q is a genius, the really ill-advised thing with his professor notwithstanding). (And _no_ , Bond is still never to call him Dr. Q; that way madness lies, and probably really awful attempts at role play.) So his professor was older and distinguished and very handsome; bit of a stereotype, really, but in the best way: greying at the temples, fine lines around his eyes only just covered by professorial glasses, tweed jackets over surprisingly broad shoulders, and so on.

The first couple of weeks of classes were spent drooling. Just. Embarrassingly obviously eyeing the man up because, again, Q was _18_. He didn’t really do subtle. Also, he sat in the back row and had really thought that would keep him from being too noticeable in his appreciation. (It didn’t.) (Certainly, Bond likes to tease him about having a shit poker face and being a terrible spy, but has he ever considered how much _worse_ Q could be? Hm? That’s right, Q of the present absolutely trumps Q of the past in subtlety, so Bond can just sod right off and also stop laughing at him because he is _trying_ to talk about his sordid affair at uni; this is _serious_. Ish.) So his professor definitely noticed that Q was absolutely smitten with him – smitten, really, because not only was he attractive, he was brilliant and witty and a bit of an opportunist because one day after class he called Q to his office over some non-existent notes on one of his papers, which led to Q blowing him under his desk.

And really, Bond can stop looking quite so offended on Q’s behalf; he knew where the story was going. Did he think Q’s professor was going to _romance_ him before taking him gently to bed? No, of course not, the man was married for god sakes. Yes, married, no, that didn’t stop Q from lusting after him any more than it stopped his professor from doing the very same thing (any more than it had ever stopped Bond, so Bond doesn’t have a leg to stand on). Q never met the man’s wife, of course, and he was glad, because he might have actually felt bad if he’d done so. (He does feel a little bad, in retrospect, just for the lack of respect he’d had for that marriage, although it couldn’t have been a terribly _stable_ marriage if the husband was out shagging his barely legal student, but _still_.)

Right, where was he? Yes, right, blowjob in the office. His professor was fairly gentlemanly about the whole thing, not being terribly rough, and even kissing Q afterwards while he jerked him off, even though Q knew some men wouldn’t _do that_ after receiving a blow job (though certainly never men that Q had liked keeping company with). It was all quite phenomenal – or Q had thought so at the time, given his level of experience, which was largely… well, it was mostly some fumbling in the dark, mostly with boys his age and not much older and hardly ever with much more experience getting another boy off, which Q’d always thought was weird, because they both _had_ penises, how did the technique in getting oneself off not translate into getting _someone else_ off, and – right, sorry, digressing. In any case, Q supposed he couldn’t have done too badly, making up for his dearth of experience with eagerness and enthusiasm, because his professor had been quite amenable to the idea of continuing (likely it was less Q’s technique and more the fact he was a willing young thing with, if he did say so himself, a very nice arse, but the results were largely the same).

Bond assures him that, whatever his technique had been like then, it was now absolutely flawless. Q preens a little, but pretends not to, because is this really the time for compliments like that? (Bond is of the opinion that most times are a good time to assure your partner that you find them very talented in bed, and Q is sort of coming around to the idea, but wishes Bond would stop saying things where there are people around.)

Moving on; Q and Q’s professor entered into some sort of relationship. Some sort of romantic relationship, that is – yes, there was absolutely the shagging, and it was just that for a little while, but the professor seemed to sense that Q was perhaps growing a little discontent with just having a quick fuck over the desk (well, not so much the fucking over the desk, Q had been very much in favor of that, it left the best sort of bruises on his hips, but it was just the fucking over the desk and doing nothing more than had been getting to him), so they took a chance and rented a hotel room and showed up separately and didn’t use their names and it was all very clandestine (stop _laughing_ , Bond) and it was _lovely_. That was when the romancing happened. They spent long evenings in bed and sometimes there were flowers or fancy meals or even champagne. Q had never had champagne before, and he really wasn’t a fan, but he drank it anyway because no one had ever really thought to get him any before and it was very sweet (the gesture, not the champagne; champagne is still not something Q particularly cares for).

Honestly, Q has always considered himself to be a realist, but he’d been young and this had been his first extended dalliance and he’d thought – well. Well, he’d thought it was… special. Maybe. A little. He didn’t sleep with anyone else or even go on dates with anyone else and as far as he was concerned, he was in a relationship. Of a sort. He understood it wasn’t conventional. He understood it wasn’t even really _healthy_. That did not, however, stop him from essentially falling in love with his professor. Ill-advised, certainly, but wasn’t love always? Well, maybe not always, but that was what Q had told himself at the time (he blamed the class on romantic literature he’d ended up taking to fill a requirement; obviously all that purple prose addled his brain. _Obviously_.). And he wasn’t expecting his professor to up and leave his wife or declare his undying love for him or anything. Well – it might have been _nice_ , but Q wasn’t that far gone.

Except maybe he was, just a little. Look, he _told_ Bond he hadn’t been in many relationships, and this was basically why. For a realist, he was entirely too easily wrapped up in things like _feelings_ and he had a tendency to take up with men who weren’t altogether _nice_ (and Bond is a good man, Q would never let him forget that, but that doesn’t necessarily make him nice; he does, however, respect Q and that is an important distinction between their relationship and the one between Q and his professor and probably most of Q’s other relationships, to be quite honest). (This one _is_ different, Q insists. Bond knows, he says. He gets it.)

So it had been about a year and Q was set to finish his degree soon and he brought it up to his professor. Casually. Just, you know, food for thought, Q wasn’t going to be his student anymore and maybe – maybe things could change? It might be nice. He wasn’t asking for the moon, he was just – no, of course not. Of course people would talk if his professor just up and left his wife. It would raise eyebrows and suspicions. People might realize what had been going on. It was their reputations at stake, Q understood, didn’t he?

But he didn’t, really. He didn’t much care for his reputation at that point (not to mention that most of his reputation was being gained as a hacker and that was rather a shady sort of reputation and wouldn’t really be touched by the revelation of having had an affair with his professor; that was the lovely thing about working with computers – nobody much gave a shit who you were in real life) and he was a little tired of being in a secret relationship and being hidden away and being made to feel ashamed and – no, he didn’t quite understand. He didn’t _want to_ understand.

They left things on kind of a sour note then. Q did decide to go and apologize because maybe he was tired of the way they’d been carrying on, but that didn’t mean he exactly wanted to lose it, except when he got to his professor’s office, he got quite a shock in the form of his professor screwing _someone else_ over the desk. Someone _female_ , even, which had somehow hurt a little more, as if Q had just been some sort of curiosity. In hindsight, he didn’t know why he’d been quite so shocked; if his professor had been cheating on his wife with Q, why _wouldn’t_ he cheat on Q with someone else?

Well. Anyway, everything sort of went to hell in a handbasket for a bit, mostly because Q went on a sort of rage-fueled, vigilante-style hacking spree, looking for absolutely anything to unleash his heartbreak and fury on (this proved to become a sort of habit any time things became emotionally overwhelming; yes, that’s exactly why there were suddenly a lot of missions to go on when Q’s cat had died last year). He definitely made sure his professor lost his job and his precious reputation and then Q had broken into MI6’s network and left his CV because really he was quite done with the idea of university and he was certainly good enough to work for them, wasn’t he? (Better than them, even; he decided they probably needed him.) (And Bond is absolutely not allowed to accuse someone of being full of themselves, that is the worst sort of hypocrisy, and Q has the skills to back his talk up, besides.)

And that’s the whole story. Q isn’t exactly proud, but there it is, and now Bond knows, and now Bond is just sort of holding onto him and Q isn’t exactly sure when he’d migrated across the sofa to be pressed into Bond’s side but look, it’s not all that traumatic or hurtful anymore, it was 10 years ago, alright? But yes, thank you for asking, Bond, it _is_ one reason Q will never let him fuck him over his desk, no matter _how_ tempting he looks when he’s in his element (and Q does-doesn’t preen at that, as well). It’s just that doing it over a desk _had_ sort of been their thing, Q’s and his professor’s, that is, but – well, no, the other reason he won’t let Bond do it is because _they are not going to have sex at work, they have been over this_. But, yes, he _does_ have a home office, and of course he has a desk, and no, he supposes he isn’t… quite adverse to the idea of making _new_ memories of desk buggery, and he’s really not sure how the conversation took this turn but he’s willing to follow it anyway because that’s how it is with Bond. Spontaneity and kind of a lot of sex but also some quiet moments and a lot of ridiculous ideas that Q secretly enjoys enabling.

(Q just really hopes that Bond doesn’t make the connection after this that he is basically the best thing that’s ever happened to Q, relationship-wise, because he’ll be _insufferable_ then, Q just knows it.)

(But there are worse things, he supposes.)


	4. Ducks, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: "Ducks" for the General Prompt Table; a prompt from the [anon exchange](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LwtIoqppLgPC3D0bJ5HF7ZcIJEnNgGmQcm21977FGJc/edit#gid=113302778): "James can't say no to Q. Everyone but Q notices."  
> Just some fluff and a quick lesson about what not to feed ducks

Bond really did not care for modern rock.

And yet, after Q had invited himself to fiddle with the radio the first time Bond had given him a ride home (“I _built_ this car, Bond, I think that gives me radio privileges.”), modern rock somehow ended up playing then and every time after. Bond had the station memorized, and if Q was too tired to reach over and set it to play, Bond absently did it for him.

He’d sat through worse, anyway.

-

Q was hacking. Bond was _bored_.

“Don’t suppose I can help?” Bond grumbled, half-serious, from Q’s more comfortable visitor chair.

“Actually…” Q murmured from behind his screen.

Bond was very nearly startled; he hadn’t really expected Q to hear him, much less reply. “Actually?” He prompted, when Q failed to pick up his train of thought.

“Oh. D’you think you could…?” Q trailed off again, lifting his empty mug with one hand; almost as an afterthought, Q glanced up from the computer and met Bond’s gaze, “Please?”

Well. It was something to do. Bond levered himself out of the chair and accepted both the mug and the small-smiled thank you from Q.

At least no one was around to see him do it.

-

“Oh.” Q sounded almost surprised, but pleased, “Oh, this is very good.”

Bond didn’t say a word of I-told-you-so, as Q’s skepticism over Bond’s upscale choice in Chinese restaurant had obviously been done away with, and instead enjoyed the look of delight Q was sending his dinner.

“Oh, Bond, you should really try this.” Q insisted.

Before Bond could say anything, Q had snatched up his unused salad fork (because Q was apparently a heathen who used the same fork for every course) and speared a piece of his cashew chicken to offer to Bond.

Bond didn’t like cashews. Not even a little. But Q looked so hopeful that he just leaned in and, rather than taking the fork as Q had likely intended, took the bite of chicken off the tines as Q held on. Q’s cheeks pinked just slightly and he rolled his eyes as Bond sat back and smirked at him, chewing.

It wasn’t altogether terrible, really.

-

Bond resisted the sigh threatening to escape. “You’ve been here nearly two days, Q.”

Q hummed vaguely in confirmation, but didn’t stop what he was doing.

“It’s late.” Bond attempted a different approach, “I’d like to go home at some point, too.”

“Well no one is forcing you to give me a ride.” Q pointed out, “You can go home whenever you like.”

This was technically true, and yet Bond refused to simply walk away from this one. He leaned against Q’s work station with an air of resignation, and Q sent him a tired smile. “Half an hour,” Q promised, “I’ll have this all wrapped up and we can both go.”

Bond didn’t resist the sigh this time, and R, who was waiting to take over when Q finally took the few days’ rest he was owed, gave him a briefly sympathetic look.

At least _someone_ cared for his plight.

-

“We could buy an entire bag of bread at a corner shop for less.” Bond insisted.

“Don’t exaggerate.” Q shook his head, leading Bond unerringly across the park to where some opportunist was selling bags of birdseed, “Besides, you can’t feed ducks bread.”

“Since when?”

“Since always. It’s not good for them. Do keep up, Bond.”

Bond rolled his eyes, but was handing over a couple of notes to the seed seller before Q had even fished his wallet out. “I could have paid.” Q told him.

Bond pressed the bag of seed into Q’s hands before he could protest further. “Just feed your bloody ducks.”

Maybe it was silly, but the grin on Q’s face was well worth it. Q adored animals; he doted on his cats, stopped in the street to pet dogs (no matter how many times Bond insisted this was a _security risk_ ), and fed the birds whenever he could get away with it. And if it made him happy, well – Bond would enable him.

He watched Q feed the ducks with growing fondness until it became apparent Q was attempting to ask him something. “Of course.” Bond nodded automatically to whatever it was; it wasn’t as though he could deny Q.

Q gave him an odd look. “Do you even have any idea what you just agreed to?”

No point in prevaricating, Bond supposed. “Not a clue.”

“Hm.” Slowly, Q set the half-empty bag of birdseed on the bench beside him, and looked back up at Bond to declare, “I’m going to kiss you now.”

And to that, Bond couldn’t have said no if he’d tried.


	5. In Vino Veritas, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: Some explicit talk of sex, hence the rating change to 'M'  
> Prompts: In Vino Veritas on the Fluff Prompt Table  
> Honestly just fluff. Q being a bit drunk and loose and babble-y and Bond being bemused but into it

“Careful.” Bond warned, steadying Q with one gentle hand on his arm and the other pressed softly against his back.

Q hummed and leaned into Bond’s touch. He wasn’t really _drunk_ , but was all the same prone to babbling and then laughing a little and stumbling just a bit if he moved too quickly. They’d made it home safely from the pub and were making their way to the sofa, much closer and thus more inviting than the bed.

“That’s very sweet of you, but unnecessary.” Q insisted, flopping down onto the couch.

“You’d rather I let you fall over?” Bond asked, joining him with a bit more dignity – not much, perhaps, considering he immediately had a lapful of Q’s legs knocking him off balance, but a bit.

“No, not–,” Q flapped his hand vaguely, “You’re so _careful_. Gentle. And it’s sweet, but it’s not necessary.”

Bond cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I’m following you, Q.”

“With your hands.” Q glanced up at Bond over the glasses that had slid far down his nose, “You’re so careful not to grab me. Because I bruise like a bloody banana.”

Ah. That.

It wasn’t something that had dawned on Bond immediately; their first couplings had been passionate, certainly, but not until one particularly rough bout against a wall did Bond realize he’d been leaving unintended marks on Q. There were the love bites, yes, but then there were the handprints on his hips and thighs where Bond had hoisted him up, and the purple-red smudges at his wrists where Bond had held him fast, leaving Q’s hands to grip fruitlessly at the air while Bond fucked him senseless. They’d looked like painful reminders of a night that should have been pleasurable, and Bond found himself rather bothered by the idea. He hurt people for a living, but not Q.

So he was careful. Gentle. Learned to keep his hands spread evenly and his grip a bit loose and to avoid leaving any marks on Q’s so easily damaged skin. Which Q was now insisting was _unnecessary_.

“You’d rather I wasn’t so careful?” Bond hazarded.

Q gave a vague “hmph” noise and began the laborious process of hoisting himself up onto his knees and wobbling his way over Bond. “I’d rather,” He stated firmly as he planted his knees on either side of Bond’s thighs and settled into his lap, “You weren’t so careful.”

Bond met Q’s gaze steadily. Q was still loose with drink, but his gaze was sharpening. “Feels good, you know. When you grab me.” Q murmured, leaning more heavily into Bond’s space, until they were nearly nose to nose, “I like it.”

The last words came out whispered, a profane little secret that caught Bond’s breath in his throat. This wasn’t the sort of thing Q would bring up were he entirely sober, but his words were clear enough to reassure Bond that he wasn’t three sheets to the wind, either. Fair game. Slowly, Bond reached up, placed his hands on Q’s hips, squeezed.

A small noise came from Q’s throat. He placed his hands over Bond’s and pressed harder, pushing his face into the crook of Bond’s neck, glasses and all, to mouth sharply at the muscle there. “I like looking at them later.” He mumbled into Bond’s skin, “Bruises. Just seeing your handprints on my thighs is enough to make me hard.”

Whatever else Q had to say was lost when Bond put a hand into his hair and pulled, redirecting his mouth into a bruising kiss, slick and sharp and thick with the tang of liquor.

That was enough confession for tonight.


	6. Contact, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: Some sex happens, I'm not sure how explicit one would rate it, but consider yourself informed  
> Prompts: "Contact" to fill the free space on the General Prompt Table; a prompt form the [anon exchange](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LwtIoqppLgPC3D0bJ5HF7ZcIJEnNgGmQcm21977FGJc/edit#gid=113302778): "When Bond comes back from difficult missions, he's very tactile with Q, NSFW or not. Q happily obliges."

Q was willing to bet Bond didn’t do it consciously. As they lay tangled on the bed, pressed together shoulders to toes, Q wasn’t even sure Bond recognized it had become a pattern. A routine, of sorts.

After harsh assignments, Q could count on Bond to find him and to hold on.

Sometimes all he was able do was put his hand on Q’s shoulder, or his arm around Q’s waist, but when they were alone, ensconced in the safety of their home, this was what they preferred – skin to skin on the soft sheets of their bed, legs tangled, Q’s arm around Bond’s back, Bond’s face buried in Q’s neck, hands gently petting at whatever was near. It wasn’t demanding, not a bid for sex, nor even for attention. It was a simple closeness that Bond craved and that Q was happy to provide.

Later, they would come back to themselves from the fuzzy half-space they’d let themselves drift into, and hands would venture lower, become more pressing. Bond would spend an age fingering Q open, dropping soft, open-mouthed kisses all over his neck, his shoulders, his chest, while his free hand roamed bare skin he couldn’t reach with his mouth. He would work two, three fingers into Q, stroking and twisting until Q sobbed and begged and rolled over to prop himself up on his knees and spread his legs invitingly. Bond would take him from behind, draped over Q like a heavy blanket and fucking into him with hard, slow thrusts until they both came panting and groaning.

They would lie together a while longer, cradled in each other. Q would eventually demand the chance to clean up and to make at least something small to eat. Bond would plaster himself against Q’s back while he stood at the counter buttering toast and Q wouldn’t even pretend to mind. Later still, they would still touch; they might have sex again, or they might just sleep, if sleep would deign to take them.

For now, though, they were content, sedate and safe in the knowledge that someone they loved was close at hand.


	7. Time Travel, Mallory/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Mallory/Q  
> Warnings: Implied torture, sort of PTSD?  
> Prompts: "Time Travel" on the General Prompt Table  
> Look I love the idea of Mallory and Q and they deserve happy nice things and instead this happened

Mallory is no stranger to nightmares, but they have always been his own. He has never had to soothe another’s fear in the night, to calm their cries or hold them until their shaking subsided. To be fair, he’s rarely had anyone else do this for him, either.

Even when he takes Q to his bed, nightmares are solitary affairs. Q knows better than to touch Mallory when he wakes tense and wild-eyed, uncertain where the danger is but certain it exists. And when Q comes to with a gasp and lays panting, trying to regain his own equilibrium, he just as often leaves the bed as does just quietly attempt to sleep again.

Of course, some things can’t be overcome so easily.

Three days in the hands of monsters is too long to come away unscathed.

Q’s nightmares following those days are immediate and severe. If he isn’t in the stuffy dark granted by pain medication, he wakes screaming, fighting, damaging himself further and putting dents in anyone who dares touch him.

He comes home (he comes back to Mallory’s house, but – they’ve shared the bed and the shower and the sofa and the kitchen and everything for some time now, isn’t it home?) and the nightmares don’t loosen their grip for ages. Q’s body heals, but his mind holds on to the pain with admirable tenacity.

They do fade, somewhat. Screaming isn’t as common. Fighting is rarer. But they remain. And Mallory is at a loss. He is lying in bed now, listening to the way Q is crying quietly in his sleep (always in his sleep, but somehow never once he wakes), feeling every single bit as useless as he had those three days Q had been taken.

Then Q comes awake. His body tenses, his breathing stills. He isn’t screaming – he’s frozen. Stuck, terrified and alone, thrown back in time to that room where Mallory couldn’t reach him. But now – now maybe he can.

Maybe he can reach through the days and weeks (and months, this has got to stop) and find Q, wherever he is now, and pull him back.

Mallory reaches out. He calls Q’s name, shakes him gently, waits for the memories and fear to recede, for Q to break in increments, before he is gathering Q up, holding him to his chest, stroking his hair, things he’s never dared to do. He promises to be there.

Every time Q falls back, Mallory will pull him forward, he swears it, and holds on.


	8. Accidentally Married, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: Probably poorly edited, I really don't feel well today. Be warned  
> Prompts: "Accidentally Married" on the Fluff Prompt Table

“What’s this festival for, again?”

“Don’t you know, Q? Everyone in town has been talking about it.”

Q scowled. “Don’t you make fun of me for not speaking this ridiculously obscure dialect of German, Bond. _You_ barely speak it.”

“Yes, but I speak more than you, and that’s all that matters.” Bond concluded with amusement, “And it’s called the Promise Festival. Some sort of romantic celebration.”

“And you thought it appropriate to bring us here?” Q didn’t sound quite as displeased as he meant to.

Bond gave him a smirk. “I thought you might like it.”

“We’re on _assignment_.” Q hissed, “We’re meant to be getting our bearings here, not celebrating a relationship that would be highly frowned upon if it was found out.”

“Come now, Q. This festival is a huge draw. It’s quite possible Garver will be here. No one needs to know we’re seeing one another.” That was easy for Bond to say; he would lose far less respect if people learned he’d been shagging the quartermaster than Q would if people learned he’d been shagging one of his agents, and had always been more cavalier about their relationship, “We’re just two colleagues checking out some of the local color, and a potential attraction for our target.”

Bond _always_ made things sound so much easier than they were, and it was so easy to let oneself be pulled along. Q pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. “Fine. Two colleagues. That’s… fine.”

“Good.” Bond nodded and reached over to take Q’s hand.

“ _Bond_.”

“Two colleagues pretending to be in a relationship.” Bond shrugged, adding cheekily, “For the festival.”

Q made an odd sort of growling noise he wasn’t aware he could make.

“It’s much less conspicuous this way. Look, there are same sex couples here, too. This place is really quite accepting.” Bond gestured around them as they walked, and he wasn’t wrong; there were two women feeding each other bites of cake at a stall down a ways, and two men holding hands as Bond and Q were, one leaning in to give the other a quick peck on the cheek.

Q harrumphed again (a skill he was fairly certain came with his position as quartermaster) but fell silent. He allowed Bond to direct their ambling, following him from one stall to another at random, being teased with the promise of some silly purchase or another, and found himself rather enjoying the experience. He refused to let his guard down quite all the way, and could tell that Bond was remaining just as wary, but it was still… nice.

The afternoon seemed to come to a peak when couples began gathering in the center of the festival square to dance. There was a live band playing bright, joyful music, and everyone in the square was laughing and smiling and clapping along. Q wasn’t particularly familiar with the customs of this tiny country they’d tracked their target—Gert Garver, an international smuggler—to; the place was barely a dot on the world map, snugged in between much larger countries in Western Europe, but it seemed a kind sort of place from where Q was standing.

“May I have this dance?”

Q blinked, thrown from his musings. “Excuse me?”

Bond smiled, still holding his hand out expectantly. “I know you like to dance. I’d hoped you would like to dance with me.”

“Oh, I…” Q cleared his throat, “That doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“Just one dance, Q.” Bond’s hand closed over his and gave a gentle tug towards the center of the square.

The people around them had noticed their exchange and were smiling. Some were laughing and gesturing in a way that suggested they found what was going on to be charming, and Q supposed his flushed face wasn’t helping matters. “One dance.” He acquiesced, allowing Bond to pull him towards the other dancers.

“Just one.” Bond promised.

Their one dance turned out rather long. The musicians didn’t stop their playing so much as let the music evolve until it had picked up into a frenzy of revelry. Q had quite lost track of himself, laughing and breathless as he and Bond spun amidst the other couples in the square. People on the sidelines were throwing flowers and streamers and laughing and cheering and Q had absolutely no idea what was going on, but for once the feeling didn’t leave him anxious. He was happy and desired and loved in the circle of Bond’s arms and felt very much the same about Bond.

Whatever was happening, he didn’t think he’d mind if it didn’t end.

It had to, of course, the musicians closing the melody off at the top of a crashing crescendo and leaving everyone teetering with the urge to take another step, laughing without breath, and the cheers on the edges of the square rose.

Then the dancers all began to line up.

Each couple, two by two, was lining up before a booth that had previously been unoccupied at the far end of the square. There was now someone in a very fine robe standing there, gesturing and speaking brightly.

“ _What are they saying?_ ” Q leaned in to whisper to Bond.

Bond listened intently, frowning slightly as he did so. “I think,” He muttered at last, “It’s time for us to go.”

“What?” Q didn’t hesitate to follow Bond, even with his questions, “What’s going on?”

Before the answer could come, they very nearly ran into the next couple lining up behind them, a man and woman older than Bond, stout and with completely greyed hair, and both eyeing Bond and Q suspiciously. The man asked them– something. Q spoke German, but this dialect was baffling; he caught maybe every word in ten.

Bond answered for them, his words a bit less smooth for a language he only half-spoke. He filled in the gaps with gestures, taking Q’s hand and pointing to the exit of the square.

The couple scowled at him. The woman gestured to Q and said something that sounded rather terse.

Bond opened his mouth to respond, but closed it again. He spent a moment staring past the woman before turning all but meek under her gaze. He muttered something that might have been apologetic, and got back in line, taking Q along with him.

Baffled, Q leaned up to whisper in Bond’s ear once more. “ _What the hell is happening?_ ”

“You’re going to be rather cross.” Bond murmured.

“Then you’d better tell me quickly.” Q insisted, halfway to irritated already.

“It seems we’re getting married.”

The world paused around Q for a moment. “Excuse me?” He hissed, “It sounded like you just said–”

“Married, yes.” Bond nodded curtly, “Seems that dance was some sort of… engagement practice. A promise. People get married or renew their vows, something like that.”

Q gaped. “Then let’s _leave_.”

Bond shook his head once. “Can’t. Apparently it’s the height of rudeness. The couple behind us thought I was breaking my promise to you. We’d cause quite a scene.”

“Since when have you ever cared about causing a bloody _scene_?” Q demanded, only to be hushed by Bond.

“Since I spotted Garver in the crowd behind us. _Don’t look back_.” Bond admonished, just as Q made to do so, “If we cause a fuss now, we might spook him. We’ll lose him in the confusion.”

“So, what, we’re just going to…”

“Get married, then approach Garver while he’s distracted by the rest of the ceremony. We’ll go from there.”

Bond always made things sound so _easy_.

“I can’t _believe_ –”

The rest of Q’s exclamation was lost as Bond leaned in and kissed him. It was the best sort of kiss, the one that somehow silenced Q’s mind and wrapped him up in nothing but Bond, made his breath catch and his fingers curl in Bond’s shirt. “Relax, Q.” Bond murmured against his lips when they pulled apart, “It’ll be alright.”

It took a moment for Q’s thoughts to catch up. “Stop interrupting me.” He finally came up with.

Bond smiled. “So sorry.” He said, in a way that suggested he wasn’t sorry at all.

Q huffed, but stepped forward when the line moved, his hand once again entwining with Bond’s.


	9. Accidental Eavesdropping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q, though it's never explicitly stated  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: "Accidental Eavesdropping" on the Fluff Prompt Table; attempt at a Felix POV for Felix Leiter day

The phone call, when it comes, is both a disappointment and a relief.

A disappointment because it’s not marching orders, a chance to finally get a move on with the mission, but a personal call. A relief because it’s _Bond’s_ personal call, and it makes the bastard finally leave the room.

Without much more than a glance in Felix’s direction, Bond gets up and moves to the bathroom—the only other room in this tiny apartment—and Felix wonders if he realizes that he can still hear his voice. It’s on a lower register, something softer than Felix thinks he’s ever heard come out of Bond’s mouth, but he _can_ hear it.

He sighs and settles in to be an unwitting third party in whatever kind of conversation makes a man like James Bond ask “How are you?” in an almost gentle tone of voice.

They’ve been holed up in here for days, waiting on the word to move, and Felix is fairly certain the only reason they haven’t killed each other yet is because they’re too stubborn to admit the other is getting on their nerves. He expects Bond wouldn’t have let anyone mistakenly overhear this call if he wasn’t so on edge – and it does have to be a mistake, because there’s no way Bond would be saying anything like “I miss you, too” with someone else in earshot. Except to whoever’s on the other end of the phone, apparently.

It’s a fair enough sentiment, though, Felix supposes. He only joined this assignment a week ago, when it carried into U.S. jurisdiction. From what he understands, Bond’s been working it for nearly two months. Whoever has reason to make Bond’s voice do things like that probably does miss him.

And Felix actually likes Bond. He does. He wouldn’t begrudge him any happiness. He doesn’t exactly _trust_ him, not really, but if he has to work with another spy, he doesn’t mind when it’s Bond. The man is some kind of hurricane, to be certain, but he has an ungodly success rate in taking out whoever he’s after, no matter the cost.

It sounds like the call is starting to wrap up now. Bond’s telling the person they should be sleeping, and a quick glance at his watch and a calculation of time zones tells Felix it’s well after midnight in England (if that is, in fact, where the call is coming from).

He’d heard about what happened to that woman who’d been in Montenegro with Bond, and there had been something feral about the man when Felix had first seen him after that. He’s only worked with Bond a handful of times in the following years, but he’s seemed increasingly stable, and Felix wonders if he owes whoever is on the other end of the phone some thanks. Bond is a good spy – he’d make an even better rogue agent, and the thought makes Felix uneasy. Better they never really found out.

In the bathroom, Bond says something that sounds an awful lot like “I love you,” but says it so softly that Felix can’t be sure, and then there are a few moments of silence. When Bond comes back into the room, his face is still stone, but his posture is looser. He still doesn’t look at Felix, instead moving straight to the kitchenette and pulling out what look like sandwich fixings.

Well, maybe he’ll at least stop staring at the wall and take out a book like a normal goddamn person. Felix turns his attention back to the window, to one of their target’s supposed hideouts, a building they’ve been watching for days (no changes yet), and is something close to surprised when Bond drops a plate with two sandwiches on the floor next to him, taking one and leaving the other for Felix.

That call _did_ put him in a better mood.

Still, Felix can’t quite help but poke over what he’d heard, genuinely curious about the person that had somehow tempered Bond. “Girlfriend?” He asks.

Bond glances up, not startled, but maybe a little puzzled. “No.” He says after a beat.

“Well you’re not married.”

“I’m not.”

Felix pauses, thinks. Someone casual isn’t going to have a direct line to Bond while he’s on a mission, and they certainly wouldn’t make Bond sound like he had. Not a girlfriend, not a wife, _definitely_ not a kid… hm. “Boyfriend?” Felix tries again.

Bond gives him another look, assessing, but somehow amused. “He prefers to say ‘partner’.”

“And what do you prefer to say?”

Bond smirks. “ _Mine_.”

Felix snorts. Man or woman, Bond always did seem like a possessive bastard. He opens his mouth to say as much, but Bond’s phone is ringing again. He doesn’t take the call into the bathroom this time, instead having a short conversation that mostly consists of “yes” and “understood” on Bond’s end, before he hangs up and says the one thing Felix has really been hoping to hear since they started their little stakeout.

“Movement.”

Everything personal is shoved back into its compartment as Bond and Felix make quick work of picking up the apartment. In ten minutes, they’ve got it packed and are out the door, as if they were never there.


	10. Blind Date, Q/Tanner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Q/Tanner, brief sort of Q/OMC but not really  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: "Blind Date" on the Fluff Prompt Table  
> Did you know that Rory Kinnear is actually taller than Ben Whishaw? Food for thought. Also I tend to headcanon Q as having no living family, but dang if his mother isn't alive in this one. Weird.

Hands down, this is the worst— _the worst_ —blind date Q has ever been on. And he’s been on a lot of blind dates. (Hazard of being a “nice young man” who leans “that way” and has trouble finding a date because he’s just so wrapped up in his work and, really, he’s also too skinny and needs a beau to take care of him. Or something. He may or may not have visited his mother this weekend and a few of his mother’s friends may or may not have descended on him. It may or may not have been a little traumatizing, but he does have an entire loaf of challah bread in his fridge now, so there’s that.)

He’s been on dates with men who were absolutely boring before, and he’s been on dates with men who, frankly, frightened him on a sort of visceral level (and if those particular men suddenly found that Q had disappeared altogether, becoming unsearchable through any electronic device they owned, well – actually, Q would absolutely take credit for having done that, because it’s an excellent bit of code), but this one is just sort of damaging his faith in humanity. And he sort of needs that faith in humanity because he’s supposed to _protect it_. (Well, maybe not humanity on the whole, but he should at least have faith in the people of his country. That’s important. He needs that. And this guy is definitely putting a dent in that.)

“Of course, any man of mine would need to stay home with the children. My career is too important to give up.” The man—whose name is… Ch-something? Chad?—is droning on.

“Sorry, what children?” Q sincerely hopes Chad—no, Chaz?—hasn’t already procreated.

“Oh, the children, you know.” Chaz or maybe Charlie waves his hand vaguely, taking a sip of his pretentiously French wine, “We would get married and then find a surrogate to birth a few children.”

Q cocks his head, doing his damnedest not to let on how quietly horrified he is by the turn the conversation has taken. “Would we?”

“Well, not _we_. I don’t mean to be presumptuous.” Charlie (Charles? He could be a Charles) grins in a way that suggests he actually _does_ mean to be presumptuous.

“Of course.” Surreptitiously, Q slides his phone from his pocket, “Why surrogacy, if I may ask? Why not adoption?”

Possibly-Charles or Possibly-Chip frowns, as if Q has just uttered something nonsensically offensive. “Well then the child wouldn’t be _mine_ , now would it?”

Good fucking God. “And you wouldn’t want your husband to donate genetic material?” Under the table, Q begins tapping out an SOS to Tanner on his phone. (Christ but he loves being able to text without looking.)

“I suppose.” Chip-but-could-also-be-Chet shrugs, “The first one would have to be mine, though.”

“Of course.” Q nods pleasantly, employing the same demeanor he puts on when there are useless bureaucrats hanging about Q branch and being distracting and he’s not allowed to do mean things to them, “And I suppose your future husband will need to be able to cook and clean?”

“Well, certainly. It goes with taking care of the children, doesn’t it?” Chip—or, oh! Chandler! Maybe.—smiles a little too brightly for Q’s liking, “Do you like to cook?”

Q is beginning to wonder why his text hasn’t yet been answered. While talking about the sheer number of unfortunate blind dates Q has been on, Tanner had casually offered to help Q out if he needed it (not by going on a date with Q or anything silly like that, of course, although that would have alleviated the problem, Q just wants to point out); they had agreed that Q would send an SOS and promptly receive a call informing him of an emergency that would require his immediate and full attention and he would be able to duck out of his terrible date. Why he keeps bothering with dates when he ends up on enough terrible ones to warrant the forming of this system, he hasn’t the foggiest. He then realizes that Chandler, or maybe it was just Chance, was still waiting for an answer. “Sometimes, I do. Cooking is the best kind of chemistry, really – your results are generally edible.”

“I suppose.” Chance, or hell, maybe Chauncey nods in a way Q has quickly learned means he’s not actually listening or interested, “You know, I do like you. I know I may seem like an old-fashioned sort of fellow, but I don’t adhere to every tradition…”

Q is, by now, both incredibly wary and ready to simply jump from his seat and declare the date over, regardless of how rude it would be. “Is that so?”

“Oh, yes,” Could-be-Chauncey-or-Chase purrs, leaning forward to put his sweaty hand over Q’s (and why is Q’s hand even still on the table, really? What is he doing? Why hasn’t he just leaned back in his seat in a visible effort not to be near his date?), “All that silly claptrap about… not being intimate before marriage. I’ve never gone in for that.”

Oh for God’s sake, could this grown man not even say _sex?_ If Q were to actually follow him to bed (if, IF), would the dirty talk involve the word _willy?_ Q almost shudders to think of it. Also, his backup is near certainly not coming, which is highly disappointing and a little worrying because Tanner _always_ comes through, so Q is preparing to tell – Chuck? Whatever – that _he_ absolutely _does_ believe in waiting until marriage (which is… a big, huge lie really, but he expects it’ll be enough to get him out of the situation) and that he’s offended it would even be suggested. On the _first date_. _Really_.

But just as he’s about to do that, he sees someone he really didn’t expect to see at the restaurant that evening.

Not that he was really expecting to see anyone but his date at the restaurant that evening, but he most certainly wasn’t expecting to see Tanner weaving around the tables, looking harried and being trailed by the maître d’.

“So sorry to interrupt.” Tanner says breathlessly, “I know you said you didn’t want to be disturbed tonight, sir.”

Oh. _Sir_. Either Tanner’s going all out or the world really _is_ ending. “It’s alright. What’s wrong?” Q prompts him, trying so hard not to laugh that he’s pretty sure he looks rather severe.

“There’s an emergency. You’re needed immediately. I hate to pull you away, but…” Tanner trails off meaningfully.

“No, I understand. Let’s go. It was… lovely, meeting you.” He turns a stressed sort of smile on… Chester! He was almost sure that was it – on Chester as he stands and rounds the table, “Thank you for dinner, Chester.”

Chester frowns. “My name is _David_.”

“Oh.” Q blinks, “Terribly sorry.”

He and Tanner are out of the restaurant and down the street before they start laughing. “You forgot his _name_?” Tanner snickers.

“He didn’t deserve to have his name remembered. He was _ghastly_.” Q insisted, “All he wanted was a little wife with a cock.”

This just starts Tanner’s laughter anew. “I’m serious!” Q huffs, though he’s really still laughing himself, “I think he was sizing me up for an apron.”

“Oh, poor dear.” Tanner pats him with not-completely-false sympathy and puts his arm around Q’s shoulders (and Q is abruptly reminded of the fact that Tanner is _taller_ than him, and that being under his arm feels very nice).

“Oh, sod off.” Q snips, though he leans into Tanner’s side, “Why are you here, anyway? A phone call would’ve sufficed.”

“I thought my appearance would lend a certain urgency to the situation.”

“Come off it, you just wanted to see me in this getup, didn’t you?”

Tanner teases him ceaselessly about his wardrobe, because Q is honestly actually quite fashionable, thank you very much, but in a world of spies in bespoke suits, he doesn’t really _seem_ like it. The fact Q had dressed in a pressed suit for his date had amused Tanner a great deal.

“It was a bonus.” Tanner admits, glancing down at Q, “You look very handsome.”

“I–” Q fishes for a suitably snappy comeback and really only comes up with a strangled, “Thank you.”

Tanner hums quietly. “Well. Now that I’ve interrupted your dinner–”

“Rescued me from my terrible date.” Q corrects.

“–it only seems right that I should feed you.”

Q blinks. Thinks. “No.” He says after a moment.

“Oh.” Tanner tenses, moves to draw away from Q, and Q reaches up quickly to grab his wrist and keep his arm wrapped around his shoulders.

“You did me a great favor this evening. _I’ll_ pay for dinner.”

“Oh.” Tanner says again, and neither argues nor tries to disentangle himself from Q as they walk, “You know it wasn’t an entirely selfless favor, don’t you?”

“I gathered.” Q grins, and angles his shoulders so it’s just a bit less awkward to walk with Tanner’s arm draped over him.

(It’s still a little awkward, but in a nice sort of way, so they don’t stop.)


	11. Gallery, Q/Silva

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Q/Silva  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: None  
> Inspired by a headcanon of sunaddicted's on Tumblr

Considering the painting before him, lost in thought, Q jumped when a pair of arms wound around his waist.

“Do you like it?” Silva murmured in his ear.

The deep, rolling voice settled Q in its familiarity, and he relaxed back against Silva’s chest, nodding. “I do. I tend to favor romanticism.”

Silva chuckled, the sound rumbling against Q’s back, sending trills up his spine. “I’ve noticed. Turner, though – he is so… _melancholy_.”

Q hummed in agreement, still contemplating the strokes of _The Fighting Temeraire_. “I like, it though. A grand old warship, being ignominiously hauled away for scrap. Making way for the new age.” He reached up to place his hands over Silva’s where they rested on his waist.

“Do you want it?”

A short laugh tumbled from Q’s lips. “The paintings here aren’t exactly for sale, Raoul.”

“Oh, darling. Sweet Q.” Silva pressed a discreet kiss to Q’s temple, the affectionate nickname rolling off his tongue – Silva’s very own clever little quartermaster, he always said; his Q, “You have yet to learn that nothing is off limits for us. If you want this painting, you shall have this painting.”

Q considered it a moment; if Silva said he could do it, then he would – Q had facilitated enough of his impossible ventures that he knew this to be true. “No,” He decided at last, “Something a little more cheerful, maybe. Brighten up the island a bit.”

“Well, I do know how much you miss it here in your London. You say no, but I have noticed.” Silva insisted, drawing back so Q could turn to face him, “We’ll find you a souvenir before we go home.”

“Something tasteful? T-shirt with a Union Jack on it, perhaps?” Q teased, just to see Silva’s lips curl in distaste, “I don’t need a souvenir. I left for a reason, but I also came back with you for a reason. We have a job to do.”

With a grin that straddled the line between charming and manic, Silva leaned in to claim a kiss from Q, who gave it willingly. For a moment, the gallery, the people, the world outside all ceased to exist, and it was just the two of them, two of the brightest minds in the world, connected.

“Whatever would I do without you?” Silva asked as he pulled back.

Q gave him a dry look. “You’d manage perfectly well without me.”

“Perhaps.” Silva nodded, a pragmatic acknowledgement, “But I do not have to, and for that I am glad. Come along, then, my darling, clever boy. Our work awaits.”

Q hummed, allowing Silva to pull him close as they left the gallery. “People to see, places to bomb…” He murmured.

“A world to run.” Silva finished gleefully, “So much to do.”


	12. Fieldwork, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: Some inappropriate/slightly derogatory language. Nothing terrible  
> Prompts: None  
> I seriously wish I had an explanation for this. It's not in response to anything, it's just been sitting in my drafts for a while and I decided to polish it up and post it for July. So here's this

It had been 30 minutes since Q had asked Bond to hold and disconnected from the comm line. Though Q had sounded less like he was under duress and more like he’d had a brainwave, Bond was beginning to worry – not enough to get up and leave the bar, to compromise the mission, not just yet, but worry all the same. The main thing was, Q was supposed to be his support on the mission, sitting safe in a hotel room a few blocks away while Bond scoped out the criminal du jour; Q had never left Bond hanging before, and that he would do so now was either irritating or concerning.

Ominously silent quartermaster aside, Bond had a mission to be getting on with, and that involved keeping an eye on the door until the guest of honor arrived. The next time the door opened, however, it was not a terrorist striding in, but–

Well, that at least explained where Q had gone.

The cords and cardigan Bond had left Q in had disappeared, replaced with dark, indecently skinny jeans and a t-shirt that somehow managed to hug his torso but fall loosely at the collar to expose throat and clavicles. Q’s hair, though still hopelessly tousled, had been pushed away from his face and, paired with his hipsterish glasses, served to make him appear younger and careless. Overall, the outfit served to accent everything attractive about Q—from red lips to round arse—and make him generally look like somebody’s barely legal fucktoy. The faint smile on his face was confidently flirtatious, and the way he moved unerringly toward Bond was similarly so.

Apparently, he was to be _Bond’s_ barely legal fucktoy.

Bypassing the chair across from Bond entirely, Q deposited himself into the agent’s lap with a grin. “Sorry I’m late,” He apologized just loudly enough that he would be heard by adjacent tables, his voice gone breathy in a way that wasn’t entirely faked if the flush high on his cheeks was anything to go by – likely rushing to get there, “I was getting ready.”

Without allowing time for a response, Q leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of Bond’s mouth, then wiped away the tacky lip gloss— _sparkling_ lip gloss, his lips were literally bloody sparkling—he’d left behind with the pad of his thumb.

Surprise registered, but didn’t show; instead, Bond leered up at Q. “I was wondering where you’d got to.”

Q beamed. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Bond leaned in, then, his lips just brushing Q’s ear as he spoke. “ _What the hell are you doing here?_ ”

Still smiling, Q bit his lip and glanced coyly about their table, as if Bond had just whispered something naughty to him. He leaned down to answer in kind. “ _Look around. Everyone is here with some kind of illicit companion. People don’t come here to pick up dates, and you looked quite out of place without one._ ”

With hands that had settled automatically around Q’s waist, Bond squeezed slightly in acknowledgement. He’d noticed what kind of clientele the discrete lounge catered to within minutes of walking in, but had been prepared to brazen it out. Perhaps even play the angle of someone stood up by their date if he had to. He’d hardly expected Q to provide a solution.

Running one hand slowly up the length of Q’s back, Bond slid a hand into dark curls and used them to tug Q’s face close to his. “So your idea was to make me look like a pedophile?” He murmured, not without some amusement.

The smirk Q gave him held shades of his usual self. “Don’t be ridiculous. Even I can’t pull off 16 anymore.” He broke the scant space between them just long enough to brush a teasing kiss to Bond’s mouth, “Though your suit does bring certain shades of sugar daddy to this relationship.”

To cover the snort of laughter that wanted to break free, Bond pulled Q down into a bruising kiss. Far from tensing and pulling away, as Bond wondered if he might, Q made brief noise of want and tilted his head to deepen the kiss, allowing Bond’s tongue to press into his mouth. He squirmed in Bond’s lap and reciprocated Bond’s ministrations with just enough enthusiasm to appear infatuated and eager to please.

Pulling back just before they might have been considered entirely too indecent for public, Bond admired the way Q’s lips had gone slick and swollen and wondered vaguely when his hand had migrated down to Q’s arse. Q seemed wryly amused by the change, readjusting himself in Bond’s lap and favoring the agent with another smile.

“Well?” Q asked after a long moment, “Aren’t you going to buy me a drink?”


	13. Diary, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: "Diary" on the Fluff Prompt Table and this prompt from the [anon exchange](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LwtIoqppLgPC3D0bJ5HF7ZcIJEnNgGmQcm21977FGJc/edit#gid=113302778): Artist!Q who draws Bond in his spare time. One day, Bond finds his portraits.

This was, Bond realized, the wrong sketchbook.

He supposed he should put it back, go back to searching for the correct one, the one full of designs that Q had sent him into his office for in the first place, and he might have – it was just that he was looking at a picture of himself.

Not a photograph, but a sketch.

It wasn’t perfect, of course, stylized and with an odd scribble at the eyebrow, trailing off at the shoulders, but it was undeniably him. And beneath it, Q’s thin, pointed handwriting tangled across the page.

_Bond returned today. Sustained some kind of head injury, had a good split by his eyebrow, but seemed very pleased with himself. Wouldn’t know the meaning of self-preservation if it bit him in the arse._

A huff of laughter brushed out at the last line. The passage went on to describe one or two more notable events in Q’s day, and Bond found himself turning the page. There was another drawing of him.

This one was more a doodle than anything, basic lines and motions with just enough details filled in that Bond recognized the vague shape of his own nose and of a gun he’d tested for Q a while ago. The words ‘insufferable showoff’ in the writing below were a fair tip as well. Bond continued flipping through the sketchbook.

There was a drawing of a cat, and Q talking about his visit to the vet that day. A messy doodle of a plate of food with a recipe below it. Another drawing of Bond, this time sharply detailed, bemoaning how broad his shoulders looked in his tailored suits ( _he does it on purpose – of course he does, that’s the point of a bespoke suit, but it’s still not fair_ ).

Bond was endeared to the little snatches of Q’s days written out between sketches. The cats made several appearances. There was the occasional doodle of a more outlandish weapon or gadget, giving Bond a brief smile. There were drawings of buildings and other people, but more than anything, there were drawings of Bond. Busts, full-body sketches, just his hands on one page, wrapped around a gun. Beneath every drawing Bond could read Q’s exasperated fondness.

_-didn’t save any of his kit, but at least he came back._

_Had dinner with Bond today, of course we ended up somewhere ritzy, but the food was worth the fuss._

_-always looks so put together, I can’t help but imagine what he’d look like if I–_

“I said the top _left_ drawer.” Q’s voice snapped across the room; if Bond were anyone else, he might have jumped.

“Sorry, got a bit distracted.” Bond lifted the sketchbook in a cheeky sort of greeting.

Q was not amused. He stalked across his tiny office and yanked the book from Bond’s unresisting hands.

“Those really are very good, you know.” Bond said lightly.

If anything, Q’s expression soured further. “You do _not_ ,” He bit out, “Get to invade my privacy, and then _mock_ me.”

“I’m not–”

“Why I trusted you to do this _simple thing_ for me–”

“Q.” Bond reached out to take Q’s wrist, gripping it firmly enough to garner some attention, “I’m not mocking you. You’re an excellent artist.”

There were still sparks in Q’s eyes. “Oh, don’t expect me to melt in the light of your sincerity.” He scoffed, “You were reading my personal diary. You had no right.”

“I didn’t. But I won’t say I’m sorry.”

“Of course you won’t.”

Bond rolled his eyes. “Has it occurred to you that perhaps I enjoy your company as well?” Q was still regarding Bond with suspicion, so he went on, “That I come down here to bother you, as you say, because I want to be here? That I’ve been taking you to dinner for a reason?”

Some of Q’s distrust slid into uncertainty. He glanced down to where Bond’s hand was still circled around his wrist, then looked back up. “Let me go.”

Bond did so.

“I don’t appreciate you rifling through my things.” Q shut the sketchbook away in its drawer before moving to the opposite side of the desk to find the book he’d wanted in the first place, “You shouldn’t expect me to be immediately forgiving.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“ _If_ , however, you manage to respect my personal space for the next few days,” Q glanced up sharply, “I might be amenable to the idea of dinner.”

Bond smiled, a small and certain thing. “And dessert?”

“Don’t push your luck.” Q admonished, but Bond could see the beginnings of a tiny smile tugging at Q’s lips, “We’ll see.”

“I’m sure we will.” Bond agreed, and allowed Q to usher him out of his office and demonstratively lock the door behind them.

It was a start, anyway.


	14. Shock, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: Some mention of blood and death. Not even as bad as the movies  
> Prompts: "Shock" on the General Prompt Table and this prompt from the [anon exchange](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LwtIoqppLgPC3D0bJ5HF7ZcIJEnNgGmQcm21977FGJc/edit#gid=113302778): "00Q: an unthinking fervent kiss when it turns out one of them isn't actually dead/seriously injured e.g. accident in Q branch"

Q branch was in chaos when Bond arrived.

There had been an accident, he’d been told; no one could get a hold of Q, last he’d heard.

He arrived just minutes behind medical.

He caught the story in snatches from the techs and engineers gossiping in a horrified hush along the edges of the room.

The laptop 008 had brought back–

–rigged to explode–

–two techs were nearby–

–Q had been there with them–

– _someone died_ –

And Bond refused to believe it. He couldn’t have lost Q, not yet. Not when Q wasn’t even his to lose. Not to something so _bloody stupid_ as an exploding laptop, he just couldn’t.

If life was determined to take every single goddamned good thing from him—every _single_ thing—surely it wouldn’t have seen fit to take Q because Q wasn’t even his, really, he’d been so careful, because he knew how these things ended up. He wasn’t stupid, he knew that his affections could put a target on someone’s back, but he had hoped if he just didn’t _touch_ Q, then he was safe.

He should have been _safe_.

Someone on the medical team was yelling. They were working quickly over a prone body, largely obscured by blood and medical equipment, and Bond watched with morbid fixation as they lifted the body onto a stretcher and hustled to get them upstairs for treatment.

Bond almost followed, as if pulled along by a string, but someone was calling his name.

He expected they only managed to get his attention because he was now trained to respond to that voice, anywhere, any time.

He turned and almost couldn’t accept that Q was standing behind him. He’d been so _sure_ –

But there he was. His glasses were missing, his hair was a mess, he was holding a gauze pad to a bloody gash on his forehead, the sleeves of his shirt were ripped and stained, but there he was.

Q, watching Bond with quizzical expectation.

And Bond couldn’t have helped himself if he’d tried. He didn’t think, just insinuated himself into Q’s personal space, one arm around his waist and a gentle hand on the back of his neck and then Bond was kissing him with hard, desperate relief.

It was made awkward by Q’s hand half in the way on his forehead, and by the way Q went rigid against him, but by the time Bond considered pulling back, Q had moved his hand and pressed himself back against Bond. The fingers of Q’s unoccupied hand curled into the front of Bond’s jacket, tugging, possibly staining the fabric, and Bond held him fast.

The kiss ended, but they didn’t part just yet.

“I…” Q stared at Bond with shock-wide eyes.

“I thought you were dead.” Bond confided, just a breath against Q’s lips.

“I…” Q tried again, “I’m alright.”

He wasn’t, quite. Bond could feel the seep of warm blood coming from Q’s arm, where he’d unthinkingly rested it on Bond’s shoulder; both arms bore cuts and scrapes from the shrapnel Q had managed to shield himself from, and the gash on his forehead was bleeding anew.

“You need to go up to medical.” Bond told him.

“No, I need to take care of my department.”

“You’re _bleeding_ –”

“Nothing major. I’ll be alright.”

“Q–”

“ _No_.” Q’s hand firmed against Bond’s front, pushing so Q could break the circle of his arms, “I cannot argue with you right now, Bond. One of my people just died. Another is in critical condition. I’m needed _here_.”

And then, because even in pain, even fighting off a shock response, Q always _knew_ , he said, “I’m not asking you to leave. Just take a step back.”

That, Bond decided, was acceptable. “I’ll be escorting you up to medical as soon as you’re not needed.”

“You’ll be in for a long wait.” Q told him, absently reapplying the gauze to his head.

“I don’t mind.”

Q looked at Bond for a moment, searching.

Whatever he found seemed to meet his approval, and he nodded. He turned his back to Bond and was at once the quartermaster, commanding and calm, directing his people through crisis, while Bond stood back and watched. His suit, pristine and pressed not 15 minutes prior, was bunched and stained by the hands and blood of a man Bond could almost believe would be clinging to life with determination for some time to come.


	15. Fairy Tale AU, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: "Fairy Tale AU" on the Fluff Prompt Table  
> So this happened. It's about 2600 words of something between a lot of fairy lore, Rumplestiltskin (because doesn't that just suit Q?), and something I may or may not have made up. I dunno. Enjoy?

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who was lost.

He didn’t mean to be lost, of course. He’d only wanted to get away from the house for a little while; away from the servants and workers and his mother forever insisting he attend his lessons. All he wanted was to play.

And so he’d slipped away from it all, out onto the grounds and, because he was alone, and because his parents had told him never to do so, out into the woods.

He’d been in the woods only a handful of times, escorted by his father or by old Kincade, and to him it was a grand adventure to wander. Only when he’d been playing for hours, when the sun was beginning to get low and a damp chill was beginning to settle, did he realize that he’d lost his way entirely.

He continued to wander until the light was low, but when he reached a clearing, he stumbled to a stop and sat himself down on the trunk of a fallen tree. He was tired and cold and, though he wouldn’t admit it, frightened.

“I just want to go home.” He mumbled to himself.

“Do you?” A voice answered.

Startled, the boy jumped up, and found a man standing before him. How the man had even managed to sneak so close, be so silent on the rustling forest floor, the boy had no idea. “Do you want to go home?” The man clarified.

The boy squinted at him in the low light. He was pale and thin, dressed strangely, with dark hair and eyes that the boy somehow couldn’t quite see. He was terribly unassuming. “I do.” The boy nodded after a moment.

“What’s your name?” The man asked him, in a voice so soft and calm the boy never thought to deny him.

“James.”

“James.” The man repeated, “Well, James, you are quite far into the forest. You are very nearly completely lost. But I can take you home.”

“You can?” James asked the man hopefully.

“Ah-ah,” The man held up a hand, “I can take you home, for a price.”

James frowned. “What do you want?”

The man grinned. “What will you give me?”

James thought. He glanced around. It was growing darker. All he wanted was to _go home_. “Anything.” James decided.

“ _Anything?_ ” The man’s grin broadened, somehow becoming a little too wide for his narrow face.

James took a step back. He thought for a moment, of his home, of the servants inside, of all the fine things there. “Anything that is mine to give.” He amended.

The man hummed. He stuck out his hand. “Deal.”

James took his hand and shook. “What will you take?”

“Nothing. Not now.” The man shook his head, “One day I will come to collect. Today, I will simply take you home.”

Still holding James’ hand, the man gave him a tug and directed him to stand up on the stump before crouching slightly before him and bidding him to climb onto his back. James wasn’t so sure the man could carry him—even his father was complaining he was growing too heavy to give rides, and this man was so slight he looked as if a stiff breeze could give him trouble—but his legs were so tired that he decided to climb on without argument.

The man stood as if James were no weight at all, and began walking.

James didn’t know how long they walked, but he found his eyes growing impossibly heavy. There was just one thing on his mind, keeping him from rest. “What’s your name?” He asked the man.

“That,” The man told him, “Would be telling.”

And then James was asleep.

-/-/-

When James had woken that night, he had been on his doorstep, the housekeeper crying out his name.

His parents had been relieved and livid in turns, only to become frightened when he told them of his unlikely rescuer.

It had been a faerie, they’d told him. Surely the creature would come for his land, for his wealth, for his firstborn. James had told them he didn’t think so, for he didn’t have any of those things, and had promised the faerie only what was his to give.

His parents had frowned and banned him from ever entering the forest again, all the same. They kept a close eye on James; they refused many unknown visitors to their home, when they had held their doors open before; they did all they could to ensure the faerie would never have leave to collect its debt.

Despite the restrictions, James grew into a fine young man, intelligent and strong, taking over as a capable head of household when his parents died. He did away with many of their strict rules, then, reopening the house to the occasional weary traveler, spending more time on the grounds, feeling quite free.

The only concession he made to his parents’ caution was that he never married, never fathered a child. He was fairly certain the faerie wouldn’t be able to take his child, since, the way he saw it, it would belong only half to him, and half to its mother. Not exactly _his_ to give, but he abstained just in case. The servants despaired of his unwillingness to sire an heir, but were otherwise content with him.

Life went on ordinarily until the evening William, the head of his household staff, came to inform him of a traveler requesting respite from the cold.

“He looks quite harmless, sir. Slip of a thing, really.” William told him.

James nodded. “Take him in to the kitchen to warm up. I’ll meet you there.”

When James finished with his work and joined his guest in the kitchen, he felt that, had he been prone to fainting spells, he might have just fainted clean away right in the kitchen doorway.

There, sitting at the table, wrapped in an old quilt and sipping from a cup of warm milk, was the faerie.

He hadn’t aged a day. He was still pale, even in the warm firelight, still terribly skinny, even beneath the quilt, and his eyes were still curiously hard to focus on. He smiled at James in the unassuming way he remembered from all those years ago. “Good evening, James.”

James nodded. “William,” He addressed the man without ever taking his eyes from the faerie, “Give me a moment with our guest.”

His tone brooked no argument. William went.

“You’ve come to collect.” James stated once he and the faerie were alone.

“I have.” The faerie nodded.

“What do you want?”

“At the moment? I would be quite pleased with a room.”

James scowled. “What is your _price?_ ”

“I’ll collect my price in due time. For now, I would be much obliged if you might offer me a room in which to stay. I travelled quite a ways to get here, you know.” The faerie told him primly, “I’m sure you recall how far.”

James hovered in indecision. Having a faerie in his home could be nothing but trouble; however, forcing a faerie _out_ of his home could only be more trouble. “Very well.” He conceded, “I will give you a room for the night. In the morning, you will take your price and go.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll take my price when I am ready and not a moment sooner.” The faerie said with a smile, “Some things cannot be rushed, James.”

Still frowning, James crossed his arms over his chest. “Fine. Now, may I have William show you to your room, or must I take you there myself?”

“You can show me the way if you’re so inclined, but I’m sure William is perfectly capable.” The faerie waved a hand carelessly.

“Very well.” James turned from the room, pausing only to give his new guest a terse, “Good _night_.”

-/-/-

The faerie joined James for breakfast the next morning.

Most of the household staff seemed quite taken with him. He was polite and charming in a quiet way, his voice as melodic and soft and James remembered it being. In no time at all, he had a cup of milk and some honey and sweet butter to spread on his bread. James frowned his way through his morning meal.

“You seem unhappy with our arrangement, James.” The faerie observed.

“I didn’t realize part of your price would be to invite yourself to partake of my home.” James grumbled.

“Well my price could be much worse.” The faerie reasoned, “But do you know what? I find that I rather like you. I’m prepared to offer you another deal.”

James’ eyes narrowed as he regarded the faerie. “What deal would that be?”

“I will drop my price,” The faerie drawled, dipping his bread into his milk, “If you can guess my name.”

James blinked. “That’s it?”

The faerie smiled. “That’s it.”

“Deal.” Bond stuck his hand across the table for the faerie to shake, “Malcolm.”

The faerie snorted in amusement. “No.”

“Michael.”

“No.”

“Monroe.”

“No.”

And so the day went.

-/-/-

The guessing game continued in the evening, when the faerie asked James if he might be up for a game of chess. James told him he had no idea faeries played chess.

“Oh, faeries love games.” Had come the response around a cheeky smile.

James lost two rounds, and the faerie suggested he might fare better if he weren’t distracted trying to guess his name.

James paused his guessing and still lost the third round, but the faerie was, at least, a gracious winner.

-/-/-

Within two days, James had exhausted every man’s name he could think of.

The servants were still quite taken with the faerie. They had begun to realize there was something peculiar about him, from his preference for sweet foods and what fruits they had to offer, to his strange eyes and his occasionally too-wide smile, to his curious inspection of the house, as though it were all new to him.

James found him in hall one evening, appreciating a door. “What _are_ you doing?”

“I quite like your house. It’s very interesting.” The faerie informed him.

James was quiet for a moment. “Will that be what you’re taking?”

“Oh, no, don’t be ridiculous.” The faerie shook his head, “What on earth would I do with a house? I’ve no idea how to make it run. You do that just splendidly.”

It was an odd answer, but a relief to James. Everyone knew faeries couldn’t lie; if he said he wasn’t after James’ house, then he wasn’t.

“Is it Abigale?” He guessed after a moment.

The faerie sent him a pleased look. “Oh, very good. It isn’t,” He added, before James could feel too pleased, “But you’re getting more creative.”

“Donella?”

“No.”

“Edna.”

“No.”

At least the faerie wasn’t as unbearable a houseguest as James had feared.

-/-/-

Inside a week, James had guessed every name he could think of, and taken to the library to search through the books of adventures in far-off lands that he’d loved as a child. Surely there were some new, exotic names in there he hadn’t tried.

In the meantime, the servants seemed to have decided their new guest was some sort of household sprite. The doors and floorboards had stopped creaking mightily with the changes in weather. Fires burned a little longer in their grates. The animals seemed a little more content.

“Why are you doing this?” James asked one evening, over what had become their regular time to play chess and chat.

“Doing what?” The faerie asked guilelessly.

James was struck for a moment by the way the fire lit the faerie’s face in soft angles. For all he simply could not tell what color or shape the faerie’s eyes were, could never quite seem to focus on them long enough to see, he was still quite handsome. “Improving the house so.” James said at last, “When you go, everyone will be all the more miserable with things they didn’t mind before.”

“I suppose.” The faerie shrugged.

“Is that what you’re after?” James asked quietly, “Our happiness?”

“Is the happiness of your household yours to give?” The faerie asked, just as soft.

“No.” James decided quickly, “It’s not.”

The faerie hummed, and they finished their game in silence.

Before retiring to his room for the evening, the faerie suggested to James, “Perhaps it’s simply that _I’m_ happy. And when I am happy, I make others happy, too.”

-/-/-

The following morning, the faerie beckoned James out of the house before they had even settled for breakfast. He walked them a ways from the house, and it didn’t occur to James to wonder if the faerie was simply walking off with him until they’d stopped.

On the ground, amongst the grass and heath dying for the winter, were splashes of blue. When the faerie bent down to pick some, James realized they were bluebells, flowering terribly out of season.

“They remind me of you.” The faerie told him, as if that explained everything, handing him the sprig of blossoms and reaching out to brush his thumb high along James’ cheek, “Just around the eyes. Very blue.”

They walked back to the house quietly, and James forgot to guess a single name that day.

-/-/-

Everything about the faerie distracted James, after that.

The fall of his dark hair, the way he kept bringing James inexplicable bluebells, how long and elegant his neck seemed, the way James could tell his eyes were sparkling, even though he was still having trouble seeing them. He looked forward to their nightly talks, even if it meant losing several games of chess.

He found himself guessing ever sillier names, just to hear the faerie laugh, a delightful and musical sound.

He stopped guessing even the most ridiculous names after that, in fear that one would be correct, and the faerie would go away.

When he realized he had fallen in love, it was far too late to do anything else.

-/-/-

It was a quiet evening, very close to the first snow of the season, when James gathered his courage. “You must go.” He told the faerie, before he could even sit down by the chessboard, “You must take your price, and you must go.”

The faerie regarded him with confusion. “Have I done something offensive?”

“I can’t stand the sight of you.” James rasped.

The faerie looked stricken. James could see it in his eyes. They were the exact color of the forest through mist that fell over the moor, James realized. They were beautiful, and they were devastated.

“I can’t stand looking at you and knowing I can’t have you.” James told him, “I can’t stand wanting to have you so badly. I need you to leave, before I find I cannot do without you.”

A moment passed, and the faerie smiled, just faintly. “If that’s the case,” He said softly, coming to stand before James, “Then I already have my prize.”

Up close, James could see the faerie’s eyes so perfectly, so bright and lively and full of warmth, and wondered why only now he could see them. “What is it?”

Smiling still, warm and soft, the faerie slid his hand over James’ chest, feeling the rhythm that beat beneath his palm. “Your heart.”

It was true, James realized. His heart belonged completely to the faerie, something that had been entirely James’ to give.

James pulled him across the small space between them, and kissed him.

The faerie stayed through the winter, and through all the winters that came after, pleased with his prize, and in the dark of James’ bedroom, one evening sometime later, he whispered to James the name he had been seeking so ardently at the start, confident James wouldn’t take back his prize.

He didn’t.

And they lived happily ever after.


	16. Focaccia, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: None  
> Made some rosemary focaccia earlier this month and some people on the Slack suggested I post it for the MI6 Cafe. [Here is the post](http://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/175971444343/rosemary-focaccia-for-james) with the recipe, and this is the fic I wrote to go along with it

The flat smelled fantastic.

The earthy aroma of herbs hung in the air, laced with the acidic zing of tomato and the heady spice of some rich meat; and above all of it, there was the bread – the buttery-warm scent of yeast and flour, all but yanking Bond straight to the kitchen from the front door.

Q was there, standing at the stove and stirring a pan of sauce, wearing a cloth apron covered in faded cat print. Bond had never quite had the heart to tease Q over the apron; the thing was so worn and creased, he expected it came from somewhere important to him. Beyond Q, cooling on the counter, Bond spotted a rack of the very thing he’d only half-consciously been hoping for since he realized Q was making Italian.

Focaccia.

“Now I could get used to this…” Bond mused as he came further into the kitchen.

Q glanced up at him over his glasses, expression already set somewhere in fond exasperation, as though he knew what was coming next.

“Dinner on the hob, ready for me when I get home; doting partner eagerly waiting my arrival…”

“Oh, shove off.” Q snorted, elbowing at Bond as he came up behind Q to spy on the pots and pans merrily bubbling away.

Bond took the halfhearted elbow to his side without so much as a flinch and wrapped his arms around Q’s waist, hooking his chin over Q’s shoulder. “Looks fantastic.”

“See if I ever do anything nice for you on my day off again, you Neanderthal.” Q huffed, though a smile was tucked into the corner of his mouth.

Humming pleased, Bond turned to press a quick kiss to the edge of Q’s jaw. “You made my favorite.”

“I did.” Q nodded, “I somehow got it into my head that you deserve nice things.”

“Can’t imagine where you got that idea.”

“Nor can I. As long as I’ve already made it, though, be a dear and go cut it up? Dinner’s nearly done.”

With another soft, amused kiss to the sensitive side of Q’s neck, Bond drew back, smirking at the tickling little shiver that crawled across Q’s shoulders as he did. He snagged the bread knife from its block and moved to where the flat of focaccia was still sitting on the cooling rack. Studded with salt and sprinkled with rosemary, it smelled absolutely wonderful, and split open invitingly under the knife.

Q had stumbled over Bond’s fondness for the Italian flatbread quite by accident, having simply decided to make some one day. He’d then watched with bemusement as Bond managed to put away near twice as much of it as he did, though Q had served himself a healthy portion of it. Q’s own version of the recipe baked up thicker than most, but Bond found he really didn’t mind.

He sliced off a few good squares before sawing off one more small piece to nosh on while dinner finished.

“You’re not eating that, are you?” Q called from the stove.

Bond quickly swallowed. “Of course not.”

“Good. Dinner’s nearly ready, and I know you wouldn’t start without me after I spent all day making everything.” Q continued blithely.

“I wouldn’t dare.” Bond agreed, glancing down at the remaining chunk of bread in his hand.

Well. He’d already eaten half of it.

Might as well dispose of the evidence…


	17. Flashbang, Gen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: None  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: None  
> Honestly, I just had this one sitting in my files. I had a lot of fun writing it, so I thought I'd share

“Q,” M sounded every inch like a disappointed parent and Bond had to push down a grin, “We talked about terrorizing the other department heads.”

“We did.” Q nodded, glancing just briefly up from his tablet to meet M’s withering gaze.

Bond wondered, just as briefly, what had happened to the Q who worried that M would fire him at the drop of a hat.

M frowned. “Why, then, did McCarthy just run up to my office to tell me that you threw a _bomb_ at him?”

“Because accountants are all alarmists.” Q finally gave M his full attention, “Does throwing anything truly volatile at someone sound like something I’d do?”

The laughter crawling up Bond’s throat turned into a cough at the last moment. Q shot Bond a frosty look. “The question wasn’t directed at you, 007.”

“Of course,” Bond demurred, “Do carry on.”

“I certainly wouldn’t damage any of our own, M. You know that.” Q cleared his throat, “Though, hypothetically, if roughly 32 minutes ago, McCarthy came barging into the lab and disrupted me while working on a chemical compound, which I have _not_ hypothetically warned actually everyone not to do, then I might have decided to show him the dangers of invading labs that are in use.”

M looked decidedly unimpressed. “Hypothetically.”

“Not in practice, of course. But if—hypothetically—I had done such a thing, it might have been with a very minor flashbang substance I’ve been working on and happened to have on hand when McCarthy might have come barging in.” Q was really starting to warm up to the scenario, “It’s really a very nifty little trick – used to replicate small to medium explosive flashes while leaving behind very little evidence. And I might have taken said substance and potentially thrown it at the wall _near_ McCarthy, just to demonstrate the bad things that can happen when you disturb people who work with volatile materials.”

“But of course, you’d never have _actually_ done such a thing because that would be in direct violation of our agreement in regards to being a menace.” M filled in.

“Of course. All purely hypothetical. I’ve never menaced anyone in my life.” The fact Q had managed to carry that one off with a straight face was, Bond would admit, impressive.

“Let’s not get carried away.” M cocked an eyebrow, “And I would assume that, if such an event had taken place, there would be absolutely no video evidence of it.”

“Not a bit.” Q shook his head, turning has back to M for a moment to grab for a pen (and likely to conceal the tiny grin Bond could still see clearly).

“Well isn’t that all theoretically very neat and tidy.”

Q hummed in agreement. “Theoretically speaking, just how much trouble would such an event have caused?” He glanced back at M, his face now back in check.

“Considering I had to listen to McCarthy rant about you for 15 minutes and the fact that you would have knowingly violated our aforementioned agreement…” M paused, and Bond could see just a thread of tension wind its way up Q’s spine, “It would depend on just how useful this hypothetical substance is.”

“Ah.” Q nodded, apparently pleased once more, “Well I’d say it has quite a lot of potential. I very recently had someone assist me with a trial; turns out it’s very believable in execution.”

Off to the side, Bond grinned. Cheeky shit.


	18. Identity, Pre-Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: None, technically, but with an eye towards Bond/Q  
> Warnings: Brief mentions of violence and the aftermath thereof  
> Prompts: "Identity" from the General Prompt Table and this anon prompt from [the exchange](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LwtIoqppLgPC3D0bJ5HF7ZcIJEnNgGmQcm21977FGJc/edit#gid=113302778): "Bond has never seen as many ghosts clinging to a person as his new Quartermaster"

Bond shifted uncomfortably, unable to quite suppress his reaction, when a young man settled onto the bench beside him in the gallery. He was generally unassuming—dark hair, glasses, overlarge coat, handsome in a round-featured way—save for the gently swirling grey mass settled firmly behind him.

Nearly everyone managed to gather a few ghosts in their lifetime, manifesting as a sort of fine grey aura around them. Most people had just one or two, the spirits of those they’d loved, or—occasionally—of someone they’d killed. Most people weren’t killers for their country, after all, and had ended a life only by accident. The young man settled beside Bond had at least a dozen ghosts. More, maybe.

Whoever this kid was, he was either a serial killer or a sink, and he was trouble.

Bond tuned out a lot of what he said, managed to answer the kid’s question, and made to leave as quickly as possible. Only the next thing the kid said could have stopped him.

“007.” Oh _no_. “I’m your new quartermaster.”

-/-/-

After months of watching Q, Bond still had no idea who Q’s ghosts were.

He certainly wasn’t a serial killer in his spare time; he barely _had_ any spare time.

(Bond knew Q orchestrated killings from afar, but that couldn’t have been it. They were much too far away to latch onto Q, even for his hand in their deaths. Besides that, he’d have had dozens more if that were the case.)

It was still possible he was a sink—someone who simply collected ghosts, regardless of any attachment to the spirit in question—but somehow Bond doubted it. Sinks were usually sensitive people; most he’d met were anxious, tired people, and Q bore up quite admirably under the weight of his ghosts, almost as though they weren’t there. Bond considered that Q might not actually see them (and while most people could see their own ghosts, some just couldn’t; Bond was on the other end of the spectrum, someone with the rare and generally unwanted ability to see not only his own ghosts, but those of other people), but dismissed this idea as well.

Now and then, an indistinct voice would rise from the shroud behind Q, giving him pause. Sometimes hands would become apparent—men’s or women’s; once, disconcertingly, there was a hand so small it couldn’t have belonged to anyone but a child—and it was obvious, if one was watching closely, that Q most definitely noticed them.

No, Q saw his ghosts, likely _knew_ his ghosts, and Bond was burning with curiosity to know _who they were_.

Had Q lost some ridiculous number of extended family? (Unlikely, not impossible.) Bonded with the spirits of victims of some freak accident only he’d survived? ( _Plane crash_ , Bond’s mind supplied.) Was Q a strong enough sink that he’d really managed to bind with some ghosts of the people he’d killed from thousands of miles away?

Q had nothing to say on the matter. He had to know Bond was able to see them, but did not once broach the subject, and Bond supposed that was fair. He wasn’t really owed an explanation, not even as he hung around Q branch more and more and became something like friends with Q.

He supposed not even when he’d once admitted, lying on Q’s couch in a painfully drunken heap, that Vesper’s ghost had held onto him the longest, and that he wasn’t sure if he’d been glad or stricken when she became indistinct after his visit to Kazan.

Only fresh ghosts were given defined features, even voices. The older a ghost was, the less it was thought of, the less of a grip it had on a person. Bond’s parents had long since left him. The ghosts of any kills who tried to hold onto him were often quickly lost. Bond wondered how many ghosts Q had already shed, and how many more he would yet take on.

Finally, catastrophe struck, and Bond found out.

A shaky operation went from bad to worse when the agent in the field was made. Q was on comms, the assignment big enough to have warranted his attention, and he’d done his best. He’d led the agent—Dermott, Bond heard later, not someone with whom he was particularly familiar, but a good agent from what he knew—so close to safety, only for him to be shot through the head less than a kilometer from the checkpoint.

Everything after that had been a scramble to bring in cleanup, to find a way to salvage the mission, to tie up the dozen loose ends left by the hole in Dermott’s head. It was well past midnight local time when things had calmed enough to send the majority of the techs who had been assisting on the mission home, and for Q to retreat to his office.

Bond found him on the floor there not long after, sobbing into his knees while Dermott’s ghost, missing the back of his skull and blurring around the edges in rage, screamed over him.

“YOU PROMISED!” Dermott’s voice cracked and echoed around Q’s small office, “YOU PROMISED! YOU PROMISED _YOU PROMISED YOU PROMISED_ –”

“Q!” Bond was on the floor beside Q, vying with the spirit for his attention.

It wasn’t uncommon for ghosts to catch in a loop, particularly those who died suddenly, and all Bond had to do was interrupt. When Q gave him no acknowledgement, Bond grabbed him by the shoulders, giving him a shake. “Q!”

At last, Q’s head snapped up, his face tear-stained and startled, eyes skidding past Dermott’s ghost to land on Bond. Robbed of the attention feeding it, Dermott’s ghost began to fade back into the grey mass writhing behind Q. It held on tenaciously, still screaming, fainter and fainter, until he had joined the mess of Q’s other spirits. Bond wondered for how long Dermott’s ghost had been screaming at Q, for the level of distress present in him. Uncertain of what else he could do, Bond pulled Q close, letting him sob into his chest.

“I– I p-promised them!” Q stuttered against Bond’s shoulder, voice thick and halfway to hysterical.

Bond rubbed his hand up and down Q’s shaking back, for whatever comfort it brought. “What did you promise?” He asked, curious despite himself.

“Keep them safe,” Q gasped, “B-bring them _back_.”

At once, the fog of spirits curled behind Q called out, a dozen voices each shouting something different and discordant, and Q shuddered hard in Bond’s arms. These were Q’s ghosts. Not people he’d cared for – people he’d failed.

“Shhh,” Bond hushed, pulling Q so close he was nearly in Bond’s lap, “It’s alright.”

Q shook his head against Bond, but said nothing.

It seemed ages before Q fully exhausted himself, leaning limp into Bond’s side and unable to do much more than catch his breath.

“You need to let them go, Q.”

Q continued to stare tiredly at the floor, glassy and red-eyed. “I don’t know how.”

Bond took a breath and held him tight. Q would need to learn, or he’d become a ghost himself before too long, and there was nothing Bond wouldn’t do, he realized, to prevent that from happening.


	19. Recruitment, Bond/Q/Madeleine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q/Madeleine Swann  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: "Recruitment" on the General Prompt Table  
> Written very quickly for Polyamory Day. Did not feel at all well today, but did the thing anyway. I really do like this pairing and I'd like to try and do it justice in the future. In the meantime, here's Bond being a smitten dork

The problem with cooking, Bond decides, is that it’s boring when you have to do it alone.

He adores being able to sit down at the table (or on the sofa) with Madeleine and Q, with gentle conversation or easy silence and a meal to enjoy. He loves when Madeleine will steal the tomatoes off his plate, as if she’s getting away with something, because she knows he doesn’t actually like whole tomatoes overmuch. He loves how Q will beg bites of whatever cheesy thing Bond or Madeleine has because Q’s own meal will have minimal dairy so as not to make him ill, but he still complains about _missing_ cheese. Bond loves talking about inconsequential things, taking time to not worry about the serious world outside their door.

Bond loves those moments, but he can’t find it in him to enjoy cooking for those moments quite as much – not when he’s the only one doing it. He feels as though the other two don’t quite understand.

Q will happily cook entire meals on his own because he’s a tyrant who’s bad at sharing the kitchen.

Madeleine never became very fond of cooking and tends to do it only when she’s the least tired of the three of them. She’ll make breakfast sometimes, though – a special treat of truly excellent scrambled eggs, and never seems to mind doing it alone.

Bond, however, is a social creature and decides that, if he’s going to make dinner, then he’s going to recruit some help.

He finds Madeleine in the library (the room in which all their combined books had once been nicely organized and now were a rather hopeless mess that no one cares to fix; there is also a very nice couch, a table for drinks, and usually a cat) and feels as if he is being received by a queen. She is lounged out on the sofa, a napping cat on her lap and indulgent smile on her face – the one she wears when she knows Bond is going to try to convince her of something (and she always seems to know).

Part of Bond rankles at the idea of being _indulged_ , coming to Madeleine as a peasant unto a tolerant queen. The rest of him manages to smother the feeling with purring smugness at the fact that this resplendent woman has dubbed him worthy of her time and affection.

In the end, she doesn’t take much convincing. He doesn’t charm her as he would a mark; Madeleine values sincerity above all else, and Bond simply lays out his thoughts for her, phrased pleasingly. The three of them (they’ll get to Q) cooking a nice dinner for themselves, spending a simple evening in each other’s company when they finally all have an evening off – wouldn’t that be nice?

It would be, she admits, and she puts her psychology journal to the side and says she’ll meet him in the kitchen if he can tear Q away from his tinkering.

Q, when Bond finds him in the workshop that takes up one half of the garage, is rather the opposite of how Bond had found Madeleine. He’s crunched up over his work bench, elbow-deep in the guts of something that’s sprouting wires, with his glasses pushed up onto the top of his head and shoving his hair into disarray. But he smiles at Bond when he sees him, purely pleased and relaxed for once, and he’s radiant, a vibrant star that has chosen to shine just on Bond for a moment, and it’s lovely.

All Q ever asks of Bond is that he be straightforward. Present the facts as they are, and Q will deal with them. And so Bond does – they’re cooking dinner and they’d appreciate it if Q would join them. It’s rare they all have the same evening off, and Bond would like it if the three of them could spend it together.

This, Bond feels, takes all the romance out of it, but it seems to be the way to go. Q is intrigued, even as he looks back down at whatever the hell it is he’s disemboweling. Surely they don’t want him to help with dinner, he insists. He likes to cook with other people in the kitchen, but is exceptionally bad at cooking _with_ other people.

They can deal with Q’s terrible inability to share the kitchen for just an evening, Bond teases.

Well. Well – Q doesn’t try much harder to resist, and lets Bond disentangle his glasses from his hair before they join Madeleine in the kitchen, ready to embark on their culinary adventure.

(It turns out to be a little bit of a disaster. Q mutters at the risotto half the time and keeps threatening to take over cooking if Bond won’t stop distracting them. He doesn’t take over, Bond doesn’t stop being distracting, Madeleine ends up overcooking the sauce because of this, and Q looks like he’d dearly like to throw something at Bond for it, but they also shout and tease and laugh and end up piled on the couch with a largely passable meal, made all the better by the fact they made it together.)

(So not actually much of a disaster at all, Bond decides.)


	20. Sleep Talking, Mallory/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Mallory/Q  
> Warnings: Absolutely none  
> Prompts: Free space on the Fluff Prompt Table, filled with "Sleep Talking"  
> This one was fun to write; nothing but absolute fluff

Q squinted through the darkness at the clock on the dresser. 3:58. Or maybe 3:28. The eight might’ve been a three. It was hard to tell with digital clocks. Everything got a bit watery-looking when he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

Whatever. It was late. So late it was early, and Q. Could. Not. Sleep.

Behind him, Mallory grumbled into his pillow.

“Gareth?” Q ventured quietly, turning to look over his shoulder.

Mallory’s eyes remained steadfastly closed, but he continued to mutter. Q caught the words “absolutely not” and something about “bloody papers.”

Half smiling, Q rolled over to face his partner. He’d found that, when he fell deeply enough, Mallory would talk in his sleep. He’d hold entire conversations sometimes. And on nights like tonight, when Q himself couldn’t sleep, he’d been known to prompt Mallory to see what would come out.

Never when he seemed distressed, of course, but when he was like this—muttering bureaucratic nonsense, more disgruntled than anything—it was a harmless sort of amusement that smothered Q’s worries for a while.

“Gareth,” He said again, softly, “What are you doing today?”

“Rabbits.” Mallory muttered, “I’ll have to tell ‘em no.”

Q bit his lip around a grin. “Tell the rabbits no?”

“Agents with rabbits. Bloody awful.” Mallory insisted, “Have to put them back.”

One short laugh escaped before Q managed to clamp down on the rest. “No rabbits for the agents, then?”

“They’ll eat all the papers. I’ll get Q to stop it.” Mallory huffed.

“Oh no, don’t foist this off on me.” Q snickered.

“They listen to Q.” Mallory sounded rather put out, “Don’t blame ‘em, though. He’s my favorite.”

Something warm and soft shifted in Q’s chest. “Am I?”

Mallory grunted an affirmative, then sat up in bed, startling Q. His eyes were still closed, apparently still asleep, for all it looked like something had quite suddenly occurred to him. “You can’t tell him.” Mallory ordered the dark in front of him, “He’d build a death ray. Then we’re all buggered.”

As Mallory lay back down, tugging the duvet over himself, Q stifled his laughter into his pillow, shoulders shaking with the effort not to wake his bedmate.

Across the room, the clock read four-something. Q still couldn’t sleep, but at least now he found it wasn’t the anxiety that kept him up, but the laughter.


	21. Circus AU, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: Brief mention of what might be a little body horror. I don't think it's too bad, but just in case  
> Prompts: "Circus AU" on the Miscellaneous AU Prompt Table  
> A scene based on the ideas I talk about in [this post.](http://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/176093557568/circus-au-headcanons) Can't keep my greasy shipping fingers off anything, apparently

Bond woke to feather-light kisses on his chest, trailing predictably to his right shoulder. “We closed down for the night?” His voice came out sleep-rough.

“Mm. You dozed off after the finale. You must be getting old.”

“Never.”

The circus had been touring since 1953 and not a one of them had aged a day. Q’s face, when Bond opened his eyes to look, was as youthful as it always was, though smudged slightly with hurriedly removed makeup.

“Maybe someone kept me up last night and I didn’t get enough sleep.” Bond suggested wryly, sliding his hands down Q’s sides to cup his arse.

“Oh?” Q’s tongue dipped into the hollow of Bond’s throat, “I do hope they made it worth your while.”

Grasping Q more firmly, Bond twisted and rolled them over, until it was Q with his back to the mattress of their bunk and Bond resting between Q’s spread thighs. “They usually do.” Bond grinned, leaning up for a kiss.

Q obliged, pressing his hands into Bond’s bare shoulders, but there was no rush to it. It was honey-thick warmth and comfort between them, Q welcoming Bond’s weight over him, around him, and Bond pleased to have Q pliant beneath him. When they drew back, Bond reached up and brushed a thumb under Q’s eye, smearing away some of his half-removed face paint.

“You missed a spot.” Bond told him.

“I wasn’t trying very hard.” Q agreed, amused, “There was a rather unfairly distracting half-naked man on my bed.”

Bond shook his head and pulled Q up from the bunk. “Come on. Let’s get the rest of that crap off of you.”

The makeup was a necessity, of course. Not only did it add to their image, but it made it much easier to explain why the same few performers had been travelling around in a show for 65 years – instead, they were characters, played by new performers however often it was convenient to change. The faces they showed to an audience were never their own, but a stylized mask of paint. Bond had always been fond of Q’s in particular—swirls of jade green and smoky blue, silver glitter to highlight his all-seeing eyes, a bruised purple-pink to accentuate his louche mouth—but he was fonder still of the man beneath.

He sat Q down in front of the dressing table and took up the makeup removal pads Q had left out after halfheartedly cleaning up. With gentle, economic movements, Bond wiped away the remaining paint and glitter. “Something is keeping you awake, too.” He commented as he revealed the dark smudges beneath Q’s eyes.

“I don’t suppose I could say it’s you?” Q offered with a tired sort of half-grin.

“You could.” Bond conceded, “But I wouldn’t believe you.”

Q hummed, then sat quietly and allowed Bond to remove the last of his makeup. Only then did he move, leaning in to capture Bond’s lips in another kiss, this one more pressing, anxious. “I’ve been having dreams again.” He admitted, pulled back from Bond just enough to speak.

His fingers brushed at Bond’s shoulder once more, and down to his ribs, rubbing gently, tentatively at the scars there. Places where his bones had broken through the skin – or so Bond had been told. He didn’t much remember the incident in question, most of the night having passed in a blur of color and pain.

The last time Q had had _dreams_ , Bond had fallen from the trapeze.

And Q’s sudden preoccupation with them made sense now. He blamed himself, still, for dismissing his dreams as meaningless, for nearly losing Bond because of that.

Prior to that, they had thought themselves entirely immortal, healing quickly even from injury and illness, but it seemed certain things could put them perilously close to death. It was a pity no one had taken the time to explain the parameters of the curse they’d found themselves under.

“What are they about?” Bond asked.

Q shook his head. “I can’t tell. They’re… confusing.” He pressed himself closer to Bond, admitting quietly, “They’re terrifying.”

“Maybe they don’t mean anything. Maybe they’re just nightmares.”

“No.” Q insisted, “They’re the same as before, they’re just not clear yet. Something is going to happen.”

“Alright.” Bond ran his palms up and down Q’s back, attempting to soothe over his frustration, “Alright. We’ll talk to Gareth first thing. Let him know that something wicked this way comes.”

Q smacked Bond on the shoulder for the reference, but Bond could feel some of his tension ebb away.

“Come to bed for now. Rest. Maybe the dreams will be clearer if you’re a little clearer-headed.” Bond entreated.

Q hummed irritably, more a rumble in his chest than anything. “Have I mentioned that living in a cursed circus is a _ridiculous_ existence?”

“Only a few times this year. You’re cutting back.” Bond prodded Q up and back over to their bunk with a faint grin.

“Well it is.” Q huffed as he shucked the soft clothes he’d put on after removing his fortuneteller getup for the night, “Ridiculous.”

“Utterly.” Bond agreed genially, pulling the blankets back and tucking himself up behind Q before covering them back up once more.

Q allowed the brief fuss, then reached over to turn out the one lamp still glowing in their small trailer before melting back a little in Bond’s embrace. In turn, Bond held him close, promising in every way he could that he and Q would be together no matter what was about to rear its head.


	22. Space AU, Pre-Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Pre-Bond/Q, very mild  
> Warnings: Mentions of slavery and genocide, a little vague on the latter, but just in case  
> Prompts: "Space AU" on the Miscellaneous AU Prompt Table  
> Originally talked about this AU in [this post](http://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/176127601983/space-au-plotbunny)

It wasn’t the first time Bond had had a knife to his throat, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. He paid it no more mind than was necessary to keep his skin intact, much more interested in the silvery sheen to the skin of the person holding the knife.

“You’re Echnolian.” He said wonderingly.

The Echnolian bared his teeth and said something that gave the universal translator in his ear a nasty case of feedback. Bond winced at the noise, and at the edge of the blade now biting more sharply into his neck. “I can’t do whatever you’re demanding if I can’t understand you.” He grunted.

Bond couldn’t see the Echnolian’s eyes, obscured as they were with goggles, but he got the impression that he was rolling them. When he spoke again, the translator functioned perfectly. “If you value your life,” The Echnolian enunciated carefully, “You will not say that again.”

Bond was willing to believe the threat was genuine; Echnolians were looked on as a frail people, not built for fighting, but this one seemed to have decided differently. “I was just surprised,” Bond shrugged as casually as he could while pinned against a wall, “I thought you were all dead or enslaved.”

“You are truly terrible at keeping your mouth shut, aren’t you?” The Echnolian snapped, “Obviously _I’m_ not dead or enslaved, and I plan on keeping it that way.”

“I wasn’t planning on _murdering_ you.” Bond scowled.

“No, I’m certain you were just planning on selling me out. Much nicer.” The Echnolian returned, dry and sharp.

“I don’t deal with people who deal in slaves.” Bond replied with palpable distaste.

“Then why were you following me?” The Echnolian was losing his patience, Bond could see.

“I was just after your gun, for fuck’s sake.” Bond admitted, “It looked nice, I liked it, I thought I might be able to take it off you.”

“You were going to try and mug me for a _gun_.” The Echnolian confirmed flatly.

“Well you’re not very physically imposing, are you? I thought it would be easier than this.” Bond gave the Echnolian a smirk, “Though having gotten you up close, I can certainly appreciate your physique a little more now.”

“Are you – are you _flirting_ with me?” The Echnolian’s smooth voice went a bit pitchy with disbelief, “While I’m holding a _knife_ to your throat?”

“Only if it’s working.”

The Echnolian gave a disgruntled huff and let Bond back from the wall. “I _should_ kill you.” He muttered.

“For flirting with you?” Bond asked, gingerly testing the skin of his throat.

“Because you know what I am. You’re a danger to me now.”

“I told you. I don’t deal with slavers.” Bond frowned, “I might be a scoundrel, but I have my limits.”

“A thief with honor, I suppose?” The Echnolian sneered.

“I’ve more skills than thieving,” Bond smiled another wolfish grin, eliciting another apparent eye-roll, “But I’ve also a few morals left, yes.”

Tilting his head, the Echnolian seemed to be considering behind tinted goggles Bond knew to be concealing the wide, bright eyes that would give the Echnolian away. Nearly all his silvery skin had been covered, hiding the natural circuitry-like markings that, likewise, would have been telling of his race. Bond had seen only a few Echnolians in his time, but they were often bared and displayed like delicate ornaments, kept as much for their aesthetics as they were for their valuable ability to connect telepathically with any technology.

But this one had somehow escaped that fate, and as he’d said, was willing to do whatever it took to keep it that way. His fingers were still curled tightly, expertly, around the beautiful knife he’d been holding to Bond’s neck.

“Look, my name is Bond. James Bond.” He didn’t bother offering his hand in greeting; they were likely a little past that, “Can’t you just… look me up?” He accompanied the suggestion with a vague gesture to his temple.

Silent a moment longer, the Echnolian continued to frown at Bond, then spoke again. “James Bond, captain of the ship Aston, wanted for everything from petty theft to murder. Relevant information includes suspected involvement in the destruction of the ship of a being known as Silva, instrumental in slave trade in the Eta Sector.” The ghost of a smirk crossed his face, “A good Samaritan after all, it seems.”

“When the opportunity arises.” Bond said dryly, “And what do I call you?”

“Your translator wasn’t designed to pick up my language. I interfaced with it to make it work, but it’s rather basic and I still don’t think it will give you my name properly.” The Echnolian paused, “Call me Q.”

“Q.” Bond tested the simple name on his tongue, “Alright, Q. Why don’t you let me buy you a drink? To make up for the misunderstanding.”

Q snorted. “ _Misunderstanding?_ You just want another chance to take my gun.”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind a closer look at it. Or at other things, if you’re amenable.” Bond offered, and Q tsked at him.

“You’re impossible.”

“Is that a no?”

“Well.” Q tipped his chin down, giving Bond an obvious onceover, “A free drink is a free drink, I suppose.”

Bond smirked. “Shall we, then?”


	23. Code, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: Some internalized transphobia, maybe  
> Prompts: "Code" on the General Prompt Table (and completes that table!)  
> This isn't quite what I wanted, but I'm also not entirely sure what I wanted, so eh. It is genderfluid Q, which I definitely wanted, so that's cool

Codes are Q’s specialty. From cryptography to the language of computers, it’s never been a mystery to Q. But gender – the way people speak of it is in a binary Q feels he just doesn’t quite understand.

When he’s a child, it’s all so easy. He plays with what he wants and dresses in what he likes and when the other children don’t like it, his mother is there to soothe his tears and promise him there’s really nothing wrong with him.

When he’s a teenager, it’s all too hard. His mother is gone and the older Q gets, the crueler people seem to be. He can’t dress how he wants, he can’t act as he likes, and there is some sort of secret code for the _right_ way to be that he simply can’t crack. He retreats into his computers, into his machines, because those he gets. Those come so easily, where other things do not.

It’s not until uni that he begins to feel like he understands. That maybe it’s okay. Well – it’s not, but it is. There’s nothing wrong with the way he is, really, it’s just that everyone _thinks_ there is. He’s learned a little better how to behave around people who don’t understand. He hates it—hates having to hide some of his clothes away in the back of the wardrobe and hates pretending he has no idea what’s going on when a woman starts talking about makeup and hates having to be careful of what he says and hates that he still feels ashamed sometimes even though he’s done _nothing wrong_ —but he’s fairly adept at it.

He gets older still and he never really gets the feeling of ‘this’ or ‘that’. One or the other, never both, never something else, just pick one and settle – he never really gets that. He puts on suits and slacks for his work, keeps his hair a little longer than is regulation for men, and accepts the title of ‘Q’ with glee because, truly, how can a letter have a gender? It’s lovely, he thinks.

Some people learn, and they don’t mind, and that’s lovely too.

He explains to Eve that it’s not really about pronouns for him. He doesn’t mind any of them, doesn’t mind terribly that people default to calling him, _him_. He’s used to it. What nags at him is that he can’t _present_ how he wants. And so Eve offers him a safe space, a safe person. Her flat or his, movie nights or dinners in where Q can dress and act as he likes, unlabeled and without judgement. He thinks Eve likes the freedom of it as well.

He explains to Bill that, no, he doesn’t want to medically transition. He’s largely content with his body by now. It’s his and it hasn’t let him down yet. Bill’s knowledge on the subject is surprisingly full, and he doesn’t ask hurtful questions, just takes Q at his word. They don’t tend to spend time together in private, but he’ll let Q ramble on at him about how frustrating things get, when he gets a little tipsy on pub nights.

And Bond—wonderfully adaptive man that he proves to be—just simply lets Q _be_. A dress today? He looks lovely. A suit? Very handsome. Nothing at all? So much the better.

Q is never _too_ anything for Bond because, as Bond had once confided, quiet in the dark of their bedroom, he’s just glad Q is there.

Lying beside someone he loves, who loves him, and able to just exist as he is for the first time in what feels like forever, Q decides the feeling is very much mutual.

And no matter how clumsy he sometimes feels his grasp of gender is, no matter how much of a puzzle it all feels, he’s gotten this far hasn’t he? Q thinks he’s done quite well.

And at least for a little while, it feels like there’s nothing wrong at all.


	24. Reincarnation AU, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: Blood, a brief instance of self-harm (though not out of mental illness, if that makes a difference)  
> Prompts: "Reincarnation AU" on the Miscellaneous AU Prompt Table  
> This AU was discussed in [this post](http://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/176160957263/reincarnation-au-plotbunny) if you want some context; otherwise, just have some angst

Bond reached out and Q pulled back. “James, I can’t… You can’t expect me to just go along with this.”

“You said,” Bond paused, quiet for a moment, “You said that you love me. That you trust me.”

“Don’t throw that in my face, I _do_ love you.” Q snapped, “But what you’re telling me is impossible. You’re not _immortal_.”

This part was never easy. Q had accepted it in his earlier lives, when things like reincarnation and immortality weren’t unheard of.  But over the centuries, his mind became firmly stuck outside the realm of the spiritual, and he had an ever harder time believing that his lover was unable to die (and oh, Gods forbid Bond should have to tell Q that this wasn’t his first life).

“Do you really think I would make something like this up?” Bond asked.

“I’m not calling you a liar, James. I know you _believe_ you’re immortal, but you’re… you’re only human.” Q shook his head, “You’re just a man. You can break and die, like everyone else.”

“I don’t, though, Q–”

“James, you have _scars_ –”

“All from recent wounds, they fade quickly–”

“And I’ve seen you injured!”

“Healing takes energy!” Despite Bond’s eternal vow not to get worked up over this particular conversation, his voice rose to match Q’s upset volume, “I can’t die, but healing takes time!”

Q ran a frustrated hand through his hair – he kept it longer in this incarnation; last time around, he’d preferred not to let it get past his ears. “Do you even _hear_ yourself right now?”

“You said you trust me, Q, why don’t you trust me on this?” Bond demanded.

“I can’t! I can’t just go along with it, I’m _scared_ for you, James!”

At that, Bond quieted. Q went on. “I can’t just take you at your word here, think of it as just a harmless fantasy. You – you get hit in the head a lot, you know? What if your brain is bleeding right now and I don’t do anything and then you die? Or, shit, what if it _is_ just a fantasy, but you believe it so well that you stop trying _not_ to get hurt? Or you–” Q broke off, pressing his hand to his mouth, taking a moment to reign himself in, “I can’t just ignore this. You need help.”

Every time. Every single lifetime, it seemed to come down to this – Q’s refusal to believe Bond, pushing the need for proof before Q had Bond in a hospital room somewhere. Bond hardly ever even bothered telling Q _why_ he sought him out.

_You’re the reincarnation of a man I fell in love with thousands of years ago, and I never stopped loving you. I find you in every lifetime and we have this fight every time and I’ll have it as many times as I need to as long as I can have you._

No, that wouldn’t go over well at all. Best reveal only his own immortality when it became necessary.

But oh, how he hated this part.

As Bond moved from the den to the kitchen, he could hear Q following behind him, frustrated, upset. His voice turned to panic when Bond pulled a knife from the drawer.

“James, no, no, don’t–!” Q cried out, moments too late as Bond drew the knife over the bared skin of his forearm.

The blood was immediate, the cut a little deeper than Bond had really meant to make it, and Q swore mightily as he grabbed for a kitchen towel to press over the wound. “What the actual _fucking hell_ do you think you’re _doing?_ ” Q very nearly roared at him, hands cinched painfully tight over Bond’s arm.

“Q, it’s–”

“You can’t fucking _do_ things like that, James!”

“ _Q!_ ” Bond succeeded in jerking his arm from Q’s grip, letting the towel fall away, “Q, I’m fine, look. I’m _fine_.”

Q made an immediate grab for Bond, stopping just short when he saw what had happened.

There was still blood smeared unappealingly over the site of the wound, and likewise on Q’s hands where he’d attempted to stem the flow of it, but the skin was undamaged. There was nothing but a fine pink line left, quickly fading to white.

Q stared.

“What. The _fuck_.”


	25. Flirting Under Fire, Fields/Moneypenny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Fields/Moneypenny  
> Warnings: Canon-typical violence. Shooting and such  
> Prompts: "Flirting Under Fire" on the Fluff Prompt Table  
> Let's just suppose Fields survived Quantum of Solace, alright? This was written for Bond Girl Day, because I can't think of a better way to celebrate than to cut Bond out of the picture and write femslash

This was ridiculous.

Terrible, awful, _ridiculous_.

Home office thought that just because she managed to survive an excursion with a double-oh, she would make a good errand girl for other agents, did they?

Fields was going to have _words_ with her superiors when she got back to England.

_If_ she got back to England.

“Please tell me you have a plan.” Fields murmured, doing her best to keep her voice level.

The agent—Moneypenny, Eve Moneypenny—glanced over at her, and gave her a smile that would have made Fields weak in the knees, if her knees hadn’t already gone a little watery when people had started shooting at them.

“I have a plan.” Moneypenny assured her.

“Oh, good.” Fields nodded, “And it involves the both of us getting out of here alive, does it?”

Moneypenny laughed. There were still bullets hailing against the columns they’d taken cover behind in the godforsaken courtyard where Fields was just supposed to be _dropping something off_ , and Moneypenny was _laughing_. It was just a little, musical thing, and Fields was charmed, despite herself.

“Of course. I’d never let a darling thing like you come to harm.” Moneypenny’s voice was terribly nice, even with that hard edge behind it that said she was feeling the strain, and it was easy to believe she knew exactly what she was doing, “Just sit tight, and do exactly as I say.”

“Alright.” Then, on pure, adrenaline-fueled impulse, referencing the light lunch that had been interrupted by gunfire, Fields added, “And when we get out of this, I demand a proper meal.”

“Do you?” Moneypenny chuckled, ducking briefly from behind her cover to fire off two shots.

There were fewer bullets coming at them after that.

“I do. A meal where no one shoots at us.”

“Alright, Miss Fields. We’ll ditch these guys and have a proper meal, then. Just the two of us.” Moneypenny winked at her, then crouched down, “Now, when I say go, I want you to run for the edge of the courtyard. Don’t stop for anything, I’ll cover you. Alright?”

Shaky, Fields nodded. “Alright.”

“Alright.” Moneypenny repeated, giving Fields one last small smile before readying herself, “And… _go_.”


	26. Little Shop of Horrors AU, gen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q is hinted at, but it's pretty gen  
> Warnings: Discussion of murder, references to domestic abuse  
> Prompts: Little Shop of Horrors (1986) AU for the free space on the Miscellaneous Prompts AU Table  
> This AU is further plotted [here](http://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/176197773463/little-shop-of-horrors-1986-au). Q the 2nd isn't mean to sound like Audrey II, but I did keep some lines from the original exchange, while still trying to make Bond sound like... Bond

The plant was talking.

The _plant_. Was _talking_.

To _him_.

“You can’t be serious.” Bond muttered.

“I’m _very_ serious.” Junior snapped, waving its vines, “I’m starving!”

“You’re starving? Well I’m getting anemic. You’ll have to wait a few days.” And now Bond was arguing with the plant.

What a fantastic turn his night was taking.

“I can’t wait a few _days_.” Junior gasped, “I’ll die before then!”

Bond rolled his eyes. Dramatic piece of greenery, this. “Fine. I’ll go down to the butcher and pick you up some chop steak, first thing.”

Junior tsked at him, rustling as it shook its enormous pod back and forth. “It must be _blood_.”

Something about the tone made Bond’s own blood go cold. “And it must be fresh.”

“Suppose cow’s blood isn’t good enough for you?” Bond inquired, flippant despite the chilling conversation, “I’ve spoiled you.”

“Perhaps.” The edges of Junior’s mouth curled up into something that almost looked like a smile, “But I still need to _eat_.”

“Eat _what_?” Bond snapped, “How do you expect me to keep feeding you? Kill people?”

“I can make it worth your while.” Junior murmured, conspiratorial.

“ _No._ ” The word was out of Bond’s mouth before he’d even consciously decided to protest, “Absolutely not.”

“You think I can’t?” Junior chuckled, a strange, squeaky noise, “And did you think all the success here in this sad little flower shop was because you just put an interesting plant in the window? All the press coverage? The money? Did you think it was a coincidence?”

“I don’t care what you’ve done. Nothing is worth murder.” Bond asserted.

“Oh, don’t think of it as murder. Think of it as… cleaning up.”

“ _Cleaning up_.” Bond repeated, his mouth dry.

“Certainly. You’ve been around. Seen some nasty things. A lot of people _deserve_ to die.” Junior crooned, looping one over-friendly vine over Bond’s shoulders.

“Shut _up_.” Bond shrugged the vine away, “There’s no one I would chop up and feed to a bloody _plant_.”

Junior hummed, considering. “Oh, we both know at least one person you would.”

Bond scowled. “What are you–”

“My namesake came in with a lovely new black eye today. He was favoring his right side over his left, too, wasn’t he? _I_ noticed, and I’m sure _you_ did, too.” Junior jabbed a vine at Bond’s chest, “You met the boyfriend yesterday. What was his name, again?”

“Silva.” Bond muttered, despite himself, “And no matter what the bastard’s done, Q would never forgive me.”

“Q doesn’t need to know. Just kill the boyfriend quietly. And get rid of the evidence by _feeding him to me!_ ”

“Shut it!” Bond thundered, “The answer is _no_.”

Turning on his heel to walk out, Bond tried to close his ears to what Junior was shouting after him, but found he couldn’t, quite.

“He’ll go too far one of these days, you know. Would you rather Q die, or the bastard beating on him? You think about that, Bond!”

-/-/-

The next day, Junior was still slumped over dramatically on the floor, but was blessedly silent. The shop was a bit calmer than usual, and it made Bond wonder if Junior really was responsible for everything it claimed.

No matter; it wasn’t worth murder.

From the storeroom, there was a sharp hiss of breath and a short grunt, pulling Bond from his thoughts. Poking his head around the door, he found Q attempting to reach for a box on a high shelf, but unable to quite get his arms above his head.

“Let me.” Bond offered, stepping into the room.

Q jerked and jumped around, arms coming up immediately to curl over his ribs. For a moment, there was real fear on his face, and it made Bond at once want to pull Q to his chest to reassure him, and hit something very hard. “Just me.” Bond said instead, making an effort to keep his voice light.

“ _Christ_.” Q breathed, dropping one arm, but keeping the other wrapped around his midsection, “You startled me.”

“I can see that. Didn’t mean to give you a heart attack, it just looked like you were having trouble.”

“Yes, well. I’m just having difficulty with… reaching. Bit sore.”

“Looks like it.” Bond eyed the miasma of color around Q’s left eye, “What happened, again?”

“I fell.” Q said hollowly, as if he knew Bond wouldn’t believe him but didn’t quite care, “I’m quite clumsy sometimes. It happens.”

Bond was quiet, still studying the bruise on Q’s face, and the way he clutched at his ribs, and Silva’s business card was suddenly quite heavy in his pocket. “I see.” Bond said at last, “Well, let me get the box for you.”

He couldn’t quite reach all the way up with his right arm, but he nudged it free with his left hand and caught it as it fell. He carried it into the shop for Q—“No reason to aggravate your side further”—and placed it on the front counter.

“Thank you, James.” Q cleared his throat, glancing uncertainly around the shop, “What’s happened to Q the 2nd, anyway? It’s quite… droopy today.”

“It just needs to be fed.” Bond told him, “I’ll be taking care of it tonight.”


	27. Holding Hands, Moneypenny/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Moneypenny/Q  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: "Holding Hands" on the Fluff Prompt Table  
> This finishes up the Fluff Prompt Table and was written for Ace/Aro Day (tiny bit late, was busy doing birthday things)

Monepenny pulled back when she felt something poke at her hip, smirking down at Q. “Need some help with that?”

Q flushed a little deeper, a lick of embarrassment nudging in with the faint arousal, and he shook his head. “Not tonight. Just this is fine.”

It was a physiological response, more than anything – arousal brought on by appropriate external stimuli. Sometimes Q was feeling a bit more than that, though, and Moneypenny didn’t mind offering a hand (as much in the literal sense as in the figurative); she’d never much minded sex, and appreciated the closeness it offered so long as her partners understood it happened on her terms, or not at all. Q himself had never been interested unless he felt, as he put it, emotionally attached (romantic feelings, he’d never say, though Moneypenny heard). Still, the mood didn’t always strike him.

Moneypenny settled her weight back over Q, pressing him down into the sofa; his hands came up automatically to smooth over her back and she gave the side of his jaw a slight nip, just where she’d left off. “Just ‘fine’?”

“More than. Great. Lovely.” Q murmured as Moneypenny trailed a few feather-light kisses back up towards his lips, “Spectacular.”

“Q,” Moneypenny cut in with sultry amusement, “Hush.”

Proving he occasionally took directions as well as he gave them, Q hushed, and reeled Moneypenny back in for another warm, slow kiss.

No, Moneypenny didn’t mind giving Q a hand if the mood struck, but she didn’t mind when he went to take a long, hot shower by himself, either, and she most certainly didn’t mind when the mood didn’t strike at all, because this – this was her favorite thing. She loved lying together, pressed up against one another in as many places as they could manage, exchanging long, soft kisses for an age before winding down and dozing off wrapped in each other.

She felt cherished, desired for her presence, for _her_ , wanted because Q cared for (loved) her. It wasn’t an exchange of physical favors, but of affection. Moneypenny was nearly purring with it as the kisses tapered down into short pecks, into soft smiles, into Moneypenny’s head in the crook of Q’s shoulder, one of Q’s hands rubbing gently at the back of her neck, his other entangled with her own.

They would lay there for a while longer, content with their closeness, pleased in one another, their entwined hands drooping off the edge of the sofa, for once without a care in the world.


	28. Renaissance Faire AU, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: "Renaissance Faire AU" on the Miscellaneous AU Prompt Table  
> This is just silly fun, really. Renaissance Faire AU first discussed in [this post](http://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/176057849143/renaissance-faire-au-headcanons-bond-is-one-of-the)

“Congratulations, Sir Bond, on your victory.” Q’s voice, soft as it seemed, projected quite regally over the tournament field.

“Thank you, my lord.” Bond replied, knelt before him.

“And here I wish to present you with your reward.” Q produced a fine leather purse containing the winnings of the tournament.

Rather than accept the purse and offer Q his thanks, Bond’s hands remained folded before him. “With respect, your highness, you may keep your money if I may request one small thing in its place.”

Q’s mind stuttered over the unexpected request, and he resisted the urge to smack Bond over the head with the purse full of fake (but still heavy) gold coins. Bond was _improvising_ again. It wasn’t like the script was terribly hard to follow: kneel before Q, allow Q to praise his victory, accept his prize, express his gratitude, and go.

(Although if Q was entirely honest, he didn’t hate improvising with Bond as much as he often said he did. It was a little bit fun.)

“What is your request, Sir Bond?” Q asked, gathering his royal air back around himself.

The smallest of smiles was edging its way across Bond’s face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “A kiss, my lord.”

“Excuse me?” Q burst out, unable to stop himself.

(No, Q took it back, improvising was terrible.)

“I don’t mean to overstep my bounds, your highness, but I have no need for money. I desire only to know I have won your favor.” Bond continued, cool as you please.

“I,” Q glanced over to M, who looked as though she was torn between smacking Bond and laughing at Q, and so had settled for just watching and would apparently be no help, “I don’t think that would be appropriate, Sir Bond.”

The audience was tittering, a few snapping photos with their phones, while the other knights looked on with unconcealed amusement.

Bond gave Q a cheeky grin. “Surely one kiss would do no harm. And it would certainly cost the kingdom less than prize money.”

Q wavered. If he refused and told Bond to accept the predetermined prize, Bond would. No more would be said about it, and the exchange would proceed as intended. Or… well.

“Rise.” Q ordered Bond, who did so with graceful haste, “You will consider this your reward for winning the tournament.”

“I will, my lord.” Bond nodded, still looking damnably pleased.

Q nodded in return. “Very well.”

Leaning in, Q pressed his lips to Bond’s in a kiss that he very much meant to keep chaste – there was an audience, after all. Bond smelled of sweat and the leather of his armor, his lips were a little heat-chapped and he was kissing Q back, achingly soft, and Q figured that he really couldn’t help the way his hands came up to cup Bond’s face as the kiss went on just a little longer than necessary.

The faire-goers in the stands were laughing and whooping, and one of the knights (probably Alec, the bastard) gave a loud wolf whistle that brought Q back to himself just as Bond dared to put a hand on his waist.

“You’re a shit, you know that?” Q murmured as he pulled back.

Bond said nothing, but winked at Q, which somehow seemed an appropriate response.

(And Q supposed improvisation wasn’t the _worst_ thing in the world.)

(But the other knights had damned well better not get any ideas.)


	29. Athletes AU, gen-ish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: Mentioned Bond/Q, Fields/Moneypenny, nothing established  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: "Athletes AU" for the Miscellaneous AU Prompts table  
> If I hadn't already laid out the tracks for this AU in [this post](http://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/176238280583/athlete-au-plotbunny), I wouldn't even count this as an "athletes AU" because almost nothing athletic is mentioned here. It's 300% high school drama (friendship is good, though? yes?)

“So.” Eve said primly, setting her pencil aside.

Q refused to look up from his textbook.

“You and James.” Eve continued.

“James and I what?” Q did his very best to sound as though he wasn’t paying very much attention.

He knew he wasn’t fooling anyone, but he felt he deserved points for effort.

Eve sighed. “You and James snogged, that’s what.”

Fields, who had been in the midst of a sip of juice, nearly choked, and Madeleine was much more gracefully hiding a smile as she patted her firmly on the back.

“Yes, thank you, because I definitely wanted to discuss this with Fields and Madeleine, too.” Q huffed, “Or at all.”

“You can trust us, Q. And there’s no shame in it.” Madeleine insisted, still looking entirely too pleased, “James is certainly attractive.”

“Bit of a prick, though.” Fields rasped, still clearing juice from her airway.

Three heads swiveled towards her, and she put up her hands in defense. “What? He _is_. If I were you, I wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

“I think Q’s given him a little more than the time of day…” Madeleine raised her eyebrows.

“Spelled it out for him on the roof of his mouth, maybe.” Eve added, barely containing laughter.

“Look, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m trying to study. Can I just do that?” Q snapped.

“If you can’t study and gossip at the same time, you’ve been severely overselling your multitasking skills.” Eve told him.

“Well then maybe I just don’t _want_ to talk about it.”

“Oh, come off it, Q, you know everything about everyone. To finally know something dirty about you is just…” Eve shook her head, “I don’t even have anything to compare it to. I’ve never actually been this happy.”

“Then you need a life, Penny.” Q groused, “I just don’t want to talk about it. Please.”

Because Q was terribly polite to pretty much everyone except Eve at this point (and she gave as good as she got), the short plea brought her up short. Q wondered if some of the hurt he was trying to bury had come through; he suspected it had, though he sincerely hoped not.

“Alright, darling. No more talking about it.” Eve assured him.

“Thank you.” Q said, quietly.

The room descended into the relative silence of Q’s study music, playing softly from the speakers on his desk. Q shifted on the bed, staring resolutely down at his textbook once more, and from the corner of his eye, saw Madeleine glance over at him from where she sat on the floor.

“You know that you _can_ talk to us, though, if you want.” She said.

“I know. But there’s nothing to talk about.” Q snapped, and like that, the rest came pouring out, “Because I’m busy with cheer and making sure I keep my scholarship and he’s busy with football and figuring out what he’s going to do about uni and we’re both just busy and also he said it was a mistake, snogging me, so it’s not going to happen again and there’s nothing to _talk about_.”

“Oh, sweetheart…” Eve uttered.

Q pushed his book away and let his head fall forward, equal parts frustrated with himself and relieved to finally tell someone.

Even with his face buried in the bedding, Q could hear the chair rolling away from the desk as Eve stood up, and expected the dip in the mattress that came a few moments later. Likewise, he expected the way Eve laid down half on top of him, squashing him a little.

“I don’t need to be coddled, Penny.” He muttered into the duvet.

“Of course you do.” Eve insisted, “Fields, come help me coddle Q.”

And because Fields was smitten with Eve and likely would have followed her over the edge of the Earth (and because she really did like Q), she stood up from her spot on the floor and sat at the head of the bed, shoving the pillows aside to make room before petting Q’s hair.

(Q didn’t even want to know how she’d figured that for his biggest weakness.)

There was no room left on Q’s narrow bed, but Madeleine reached up from the floor and took the hand that wasn’t being laid upon to give it a squeeze.

Q sighed. “How am I supposed to study like this?”

Eve snickered in his ear. “You pass almost everything without studying because you’re a bastard.”

“How are _you_ all supposed to study like this?” Q tried again.

“ _I’m_ still studying.” Came Madeleine’s voice from the floor, before Eve shushed her.

“Q, just let yourself be comforted for five bloody minutes, would you?” Eve demanded.

Well.

Five minutes wouldn’t kill him, Q supposed.


	30. Calculated, Gen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: None  
> Warnings: None  
> Prompts: None  
> A little snippet of a reverse AU I was writing a while ago, based in the same universe as my [Quartermaster!Bond](http://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/175853975538/reverseau-headcanons-quartermaster-bond-bond)/[Double-Oh Agent!Q](http://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/175884480463/reverseau-headcanons-00-agent-q-q-agent-0017) headcanons. If you don't want to click through, the important takeaway is that Bond is Q, but only on comms, and Q is 0017 (17, more familiarly)

“0017, what in God’s name are you _wearing?_ ” Bond demanded as 17 came into view on the security feed from the hotel lobby.

“Camouflage.” 17 replied, tugging absently at the edge of his mustard-colored cardigan.

“Camo– you do realize that the location you’re heading to is a very high end bar, don’t you? For fuck’s sake, you look like you’re attending a speed dating event for basement shut-ins.” Bond huffed.

“ _Rude_. This cardigan’s designer, I’ll have you know.” 17 returned, though he sounded vaguely amused, “And whose mission is this, anyway?”

“Yours. But may I remind you who’s _handling_ the mission?” Bond snapped.

“You are, Quartermaster. And your _handling_ will be greatly appreciated when it’s necessary, but it isn’t necessary right now.” 17’s voice was lower now, having managed to hail down a cab, “Trust that I know what I’m doing, Q. You’re looking at me as some green agent, but I didn’t make double-oh status for nothing.”

Bond released a slow breath through his nose, willing himself to calm. “If I have to find some way to pull your skinny arse out of the fire, you’ll never hear the end of me saying I told you so.” He muttered through the com.

“If you have to pull my arse out of the fire, I’ll deserve hearing endless I told you so’s.” 17 murmured back, “And I’m not nearly so skinny as you keep insisting I am.”

There was a short bark of laughter in 17’s ear before the comm went silent.

-/-/-

An hour or so later, Bond watched in disbelief as 17 chatted in perfect French with the mark’s wife over a glass of wine.

The moment 17 stepped out of the cab, he had affected a different demeanor entirely from his usual ease and confidence. He walked with some trepidation, uneasy tension in his shoulders and a barely-quashed nervous expression that made him look every inch the wet-behind-the-ears agent he kept insisting he wasn’t. Once inside the bar, he’d stutteringly ordered a glass of wine, voice just as uncertain as he looked, and settled on a bar stool to carefully survey the room, like a new kid in school trying to decide which table he could sit at without disturbing the social hierarchy.

And the mark’s wife had swooped in on him almost instantly.

17 struck up a quiet conversation and, when confronted with the observation that he didn’t look like he belonged there at all, he sheepishly admitted that he was trying to get back into the dating scene after a nasty breakup with his boyfriend. He said he thought a change in venue might stop him from falling in with another bad boy and the wife had just about melted.

Bond listened as the two nattered on about men and as 17 let the wife make suggestions about his wardrobe while he complimented her taste in wine and it was honestly one of the most boring things Bond had had to oversee in a very, very long time until – “You simply _must_ come meet my friends. They’ll adore you!” The wife insisted.

“Oh, I would absolutely love to meet them!” 17 enthused, grinning wide and innocent.

“Here, I’ll pay the tab and we’ll go somewhere better, you’ll love it.” The wife pulled 17 up to the bar with an arm looped through his, “It’s a bit more _exclusive_ than this place, but I’ll get you in, darling.”

17 allowed himself to be led outside to wait for the car the wife had called around to take them to what was, undoubtedly, her husband’s exclusive club, where he would then be led right to the VIP section on the arm of the mark’s wife.

“You sneaky little bastard.” Bond muttered.

17 said nothing, but aimed a smug smirk at the nearest CCTV camera while the wife was turned away.

-/-/-

Two days later, when 17 had returned with all the information MI6 had needed, lifted both from the club’s closed network and main office, Bond turned a demandingly curious eye on 17. “How did you know that would work?”

The agent leaned against one of the slightly cluttered work tables, dressed once again in well-fitting slacks with a sharp button down and jacket, as Bond had become accustomed to seeing. “Vivien is very fond of following trends, and it’s quite _trendy_ to have a homosexual friend. A bit patronizing, really, but a useful gambit nonetheless.” 17 shrugged, “So I made myself stick out a bit, played up the picture of a nervous boy simply trying to pick up a new friend after a nasty breakup with a _beastly_ boyfriend, and the rest worked itself out. Vivien snatched me up and no doubt intended to make me her pet project. She’s probably rather disappointed I’ve left, actually.”

Bond rolled his eyes. “Absolutely ridiculous.”

“A calculated ploy.” 17 countered, “Which worked flawlessly, by the way, so you can save your I told you so’s for another time.”

“I’m very much looking forward to it.” Bond gave the agent a tight smile.

“I’m sure you are.” 17 nodded, pushing off the work table with a small, satisfied grin, “Also, if I haven’t mentioned, the automatic lock pick was really quite exceptional. I do hope you plan on sticking to such streamlined, simple devices in the future.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. The next thing I make will have to be something with an incredibly loud bang just to balance out the lock pick.” Bond smirked.

It was 17’s turn to roll his eyes. “Absolutely ridiculous.” He turned to leave the branch and had nearly made it to the door before Bond called after him.

“Leave the prototype, 0017.”

17 stopped, pulled a pen—a _prototype_ —out of his trouser pocket that nearly anybody other than Bond would likely have missed him swiping in the first place, and placed it on the nearest desk. He threw a rakish grin over his shoulder at Bond before departing, leaving the quartermaster to shake his head in wondering amusement.


	31. Done, Bond/Q

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Bond/Q  
> Warnings: Miscommunication, some anger  
> Prompts: From the [anon exchange](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LwtIoqppLgPC3D0bJ5HF7ZcIJEnNgGmQcm21977FGJc/edit#gid=113302778): "James and Q are exes by the time Spectre rolls around. Mutual pining, regret, and a Spectre-fix it"  
> Kinda failed on the mutual pining, since this is kinda short, but... yeah. This one bumped the rating up to E, so be aware!  
> This is it for 007 Fest! I've had a blast, thank you to everyone who's bookmarked or kudo'd or commented, you guys are lovely and I'm so pleased that anyone at all enjoyed even a little bit of the mess of stuff I've written this month <3

They shouldn’t be doing this. There are a number of good reasons why they shouldn’t be here, in Q’s bed, wrapped in each other, hands groping whatever they can reach, mouths pressing open and wet – so many reasons, but then Bond presses a third finger into him, and Q can’t remember a single one of them.

The burning stretch is _good_ , perfect and full, Bond remembers exactly how Q likes it, fucking his fingers fast into Q’s arse, teasing at his prostate before twisting away from it, rubbing quick and hard until Q feels raw with it, sparking and jerking and _wanting_.

“ _James_.” Q gasps, his hand finding the back of Bond’s neck and squeezing hard, “God, just – fuck, just _fuck me_ already.”

Bond always used to laugh at Q, given to good-natured and lust-driven teasing when Q begged him. Now, though, he’s just as desperate as Q, just as ready to slide home, and rips into the condom packet like a man possessed.

Past the initial resistance, the muscle long stretched into submission, Bond slides slow and steady into Q, until he’s sunk to the root and it’s all Q can do to gasp, open-mouthed and breathless with how stretched wide and full it feels, the familiar deep weight of Bond’s cock in him. Bond’s hands are wrapped so tight around Q’s thighs that he knows they’ll bruise, pinning him wide open, and Q takes a moment to regain control before clenching down on the unyielding hardness inside him, until Bond is gasping too. “ _Move_.” Q demands, and Bond does.

Drawing back, nearly pulling out, Bond pauses just a moment before thrusting back in, in one long, hard move, and Q grunts with the pleasure of it.

He had expected their liaison to be hard and dirty, and isn’t disappointed. Bond is pounding him into the mattress, every thrust punching a soft sound from him, his near constant vocalizing accompanied by the slick noise of their bodies drawing apart and meeting, over and again. Bond releases Q’s legs only to slide a firm grip onto Q’s arse, squeezing and spreading him wider, and _god_ , Q’s certain it won’t get any better – and then Bond starts talking.

“Missed this.” He growls in Q’s ear, taking a moment to bite down on the lobe, “Missed the way you feel around me, the way you taste,” Bond punctuates this with a broad lick up Q’s neck, “Missed the way you scream when I make you come. Are you going to come, Q?”

Q isn’t going to give him the satisfaction of an answer, but Bond slides his fingers further inward, pressing around the edge of Q’s hole, creating new points of inescapable pressure, still fucking into him steady and hard, and Q tosses his head to the side with a cry. “ _Yes_ , you bastard,” Q grits out, voice gone high and tight, “Shit, _yes_.”

Bond licks the underside of Q’s jaw. “Touch yourself.” He bids, and Q obeys, wrapping one shaking hand around his cock and tugging half in time with Bond’s thrusts.

It’s good. It’s so good, and Q is going to come, he can feel it curling tight behind his balls, and he isn’t sure if wants it now, now, _now,_ or if he wants this to go on just a little longer.

And then, because Bond is a bastard who remembers exactly how to reduce Q to a liquid mess of keening orgasm, he pulls back a bit and fucks Q in short, jerking thrusts, riding Q’s prostate for all he’s worth, until Q is sobbing with it, and leans to speak in his ear again. “Come on, Elijah. Come for me.”

Q couldn’t hold out if he wanted to.

He comes with a wail, making an utter mess of his stomach and chest, as if he weren’t sticky enough already, and is aware of Bond fucking him through it, coming deep inside him after another handful of thrusts, and then just – kneeling there, for a moment, panting, with his cock still and softening in Q, his forehead pressed into the curve of Q’s neck, and it’s all so intimate and soft that for a fuzzy minute or so, it’s almost like nothing has changed at all.

But it has. Everything has changed, and every reason why this was a terrible idea comes rushing back to Q as Bond pulls out and leans over the side of the bed to dispose of the condom.

He feels cold, numbly accepting the handful of tissues Bond offers him to clean away the worst of the mess on his front.

Bond is going to leave now, Q knows. He’s going to take the Aston and his pretty blonde pet and fuck off into the sunset and Q is going to be left behind with a sore arse that won’t let him forget for days how fucking weak he is (and an aching hole in his chest that will remind him far longer than that). Any moment now, Bond’s going to get up, collect his clothes, and go.

Except he doesn’t.

He’s just lying in the bed beside Q. Not looking at him, not touching him, but not moving, and it makes Q angry.

Q twists onto his side, facing away from Bond. “You can go now.”

Bond is quiet for a moment. “Elijah…”

“ _No_.” Q jolts upright, cutting Bond off, “You don’t get to call me that anymore! You lost that privilege. You shouldn’t even – I shouldn’t have even let it get this far, but you’re just going to leave, so _leave_.”

“I’m not leaving, Q.” Bond speaks with slow, measured patience, and it’s just pissing Q off more.

“Well why the fuck _not?_ You’ve got the car, you’ve got the girl, you’ve had one last shag with the pathetic shit who won’t say ‘no’ to you, what more do you fucking _need_ , James?”

“Madeleine’s gone. I pulled a few favors for her, and she’s in the wind. Going to start over somewhere.”

Q frowns, glancing over his shoulder despite himself. “What–”

“And I didn’t actually come here with the intent to have sex with you, believe it or not.”

This time, Q just scoffs, looking away.

Bond continues. “I came here to tell you that I’m done.”

“What are you talking about?” Q snaps, deciding at last this is a conversation he’ll probably have to face Bond for, and turning a bit to do so.

“This was it for me. M’s final mission. And after everything… I’m just tired, Q.” Bond closes his eyes a moment, and looks his years in a way he hasn’t since Q first met him, “I thought about it. Thought about what I would do now, and I didn’t have an answer. My mind just kept coming back to you. And that’s all I want to do.”

“James…”

Bond looks at him again, eyes resting tiredly on Q. “You did say. If I ever got my head out of my arse, I think you put it, you said I should let you know. This is me, letting you know.”

An almost painful thrill washes through Q’s nerves, but he holds himself steady and stern. “Why should I believe that this time, after every other time, you’re here to stay?”

“M will have my official resignation on his desk in the morning. Beyond that,” Bond gives a sort of shrug, “You probably know me better than anyone alive. You’ll just have to decide for yourself.”

If any answer were to even begin to convince Q, that one is close. There are no undue promises, no flowery words or sweet nothings; Bond is offering Q what little he has, laying it out to be taken if Q so wishes. Q sighs, and crumples back against the pillows.

Slowly, he reaches out to place his hand over Bond’s where it lies on the sheets. “What do you want, James?” He asks again.

Bond takes Q’s hand, lifts it to his mouth and presses the back of it to his lips. “Whatever you’ll give me, Q.” He murmurs, “Whatever I can get.”


	32. Bonus Chapter: Headcanons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the headcanons posted throughout July. Mixed bag of pairings, varying levels of seriousness, one or two may be NSFW

**Moneypenny**

  * Moneypenny does not have a mothering instinct. She just doesn’t. Children are not a thing she wants. They are small and loud and very dependent and she just. Doesn’t want.
  * She does, however, have a great need to fix people. Mostly friends. She just has the need to go up and help people, but to do it in a brusque sort of way that might seem a little like she’s less attached than she actually is
  * This was actually what led her to be a field agent; she knew she wanted to help people, but she wasn’t really the sort to go out and do one-on-one volunteering or anything like that – she wanted to be active and work on a larger scale. Thus, MI6 and fieldwork
  * She gets almost the same sort of satisfaction out of her administrative position; even though she’s not as active, she’s still making a difference, and has the chance to keep an eye on her favorite coworkers while she’s at it
  * She is asexual, but considers herself sex-positive. She doesn’t mind sex, doesn’t really even mind giving a partner a hand if she’s in the mood, but is much more interested in just physical contact – she likes being intimate with a person; that’s the part that matters to her
  * Moneypenny is of the opinion that people being able to walk in heels is an important life skill. She can run at full speed in a good pair of heels without damaging anything. She taught Q how to walk in heels, and in return he designed the most comfortable, shock-absorbent shoe inserts she’s ever had the pleasure of walking on. (She doesn’t kid herself in thinking that Q designed them completely out of altruism; she knows he uses them in his own shoes, heeled or otherwise, but she appreciates that he shared them)
  * Even though no one can rock a gown and heels like Moneypenny, she’s much happier in practical clothing at the end of the day. Give her close-cut, breathable outfits with a great range of motion and she is a happy camper. The fact that she manages to look gorgeous in even just cargo pants and a t-shirt is certainly a point in favor of just wearing comfortable clothes when she can



**Pre-Q**

  * Q’s family was Jewish. He doesn’t practice, tends to think of himself as agnostic, but there are still some simple memories and customs he finds comforting
  * He didn’t have a lot of money growing up. His family wasn’t destitute, but things were always a bit tight. He loved following both tech and fashion trends and wishing that  _one day…_
  * Q has always loved animals. He didn’t have pets as a child, but he used to feed the stray neighborhood cats, no matter how many times his mother scolded him over it
  * He attended university early on scholarship. It wasn’t particularly easy, since everyone was at least a few years older than him and didn’t seem to find him worth their interest, but he pushed through
  * Q’s mother died when he was 15; his father had passed when he was almost too young to remember. Guardianship passed to his paternal grandparents, whom he stayed with when not at uni
  * It was Q’s grandfather who taught him how to fix cars. The man had been a mechanic all his life, but was getting on in years and told Q he needed a better set of eyes and a nimbler set of fingers to do the work. It helped Q work through some of his grief
  * Q absolutely had an affair with one of his professors. It was Q’s first “relationship” (as he saw it) and it ended rather poorly. He left his CV for MI6 to find shortly afterwards



**Q Branch Sucks At Basic Needs**

  * Q branch technicians and engineers are almost universally terrible at remembering to eat/drink water/sleep. Their jobs are very consuming
  * In order to avoid violating a number of health and safety and/or labor laws, they created The Schedule
  * Every two hours after clocking in, employees will receive a discrete (but not necessarily ignorable) reminder at their station to get something to drink if they don’t already have something, or to get water if they haven’t had any today
  * Shift breaks are enforced religiously. Employees must go eat something, or at least step away from their station for a short while. They receive reminders of this as well
  * Employees with special needs, such as medication or special diets, can program reminders for those needs into The Schedule
  * The Schedule is also on everyone’s phone, so they can’t escape it by just not being at their desk. Alerts can be postponed or turned off in case of emergency, however (a mission gone south, time-sensitive projects, etc.)
  * If someone is unable to leave their station for some reason, they can pass their reminder on to a neighbor. Desk neighbors are honor-bound to assist



**Q's Glasses**

  * Q is nearsighted. This is really pretty alright with him; a bit irritating, but it doesn’t interfere with his work. Pretty much everything he works on is near enough to him that he doesn’t actually need glasses to see it
  * In fact, working on screens or equipment close-up can be kind of irritating when he  _is_  wearing glasses, so he has a tendency to take them off. Usually, he just puts them on top of his head without really thinking about it
  * He doesn’t do this at work, because there screens on the walls and people to talk to and he has to switch from looking at things close up to far away often enough that taking his glasses off just isn’t worth it
  * At home, though - takes ‘em off and puts ‘em on his head. Bond starts to see this the more he starts hanging around Q’s house. He finds it a little endearing, the way Q will sort of squint at him when he’s taken his glasses off and Bond is trying to talk to him from across the room
  * He finds it  _hilarious_ , however, when Q needs to put his glasses back on and can’t find them. He takes them off and stows them away so unthinkingly that he forgets they’re on his head and then he’s tearing the room apart because  _they were just here, I swear to God, stop laughing at me and help, James_
  * When he finally does locate his glasses on top of his head, it’s a nightmare trying to get them off again because his hair has started to eat them. Honestly, his hair has a mind of its own; there’s a lot of tugging and teasing and swearing and then finally his glasses are free but his hair looks a bit like something tried to nest in it and Bond has never been so amused
  * Eventually, Q gets tired of this (mostly he gets tired of Bond laughing at him; if it weren’t for that, he’d probably go on storing his glasses on top of his head forever and constantly forgetting it’s a bad idea) and puts a tether on his glasses so he can take them off and just let them hang around his neck (Bond teases him for that, too, but mostly to cover up the fact that he actually  _really likes_  how it looks, it seriously adds to the hot librarian image that Bond didn’t know he had a thing for until just now)



**Crocodile Tears**

  * Q mastered the ability to cry on command when he was quite young. He was a manipulative little bastard. His mother never fell for it, so he never tried it with her, but there were a few teachers and other assorted authority figures who were far more easily taken in, and Q saved it for the most dire of situations
  * He was incredibly convincing
  * He hasn’t done it in years, of course (except for one night on the town when he and Moneypenny got into a little too much trouble, but that’s another story); he needs people to take him seriously, and crocodile tears are neither professional nor mature
  * He never even really  _thinks_  about using it as a tactic, except - except James Fucking Bond is merrily fucking tap dancing on his last  _fucking_  nerve; the man hasn’t returned one piece of equipment to date. Not a single piece
  * Q doesn’t begrudge agents the tech they break or lose as long as the agents themselves come back; lives are more important. It’s just that Bond is doing it  _on purpose_. He is. He’s doing it to see what Q will do
  * So Q bides his time. He needs his relationship with Bond to be in exactly the right place for this to work. Bond needs to feel badly, not lose respect. So Q fosters a sort of friendship with Bond
  * Damaged and/or lost equipment aside, he and Bond get along fairly well. They eat lunch together sometimes. They flirt rather a lot, which Q doesn’t read much into because Bond flirts with everyone. Bond brings him little trinkets sometimes, which just sort of drives the “doing it on purpose” theory home, but otherwise, Q is rather enjoying his time with Bond
  * He’s not calling his plan off, of course
  * And finally, literal months after he’d decided what to do, he gets the chance. He’s having a bad day already, and that sort of helps. Bond is due back and his mission went quite well, really. There’s no reason for him to  _not_  have his equipment, but he doesn’t. And he seems really smug about it
  * Q, meanwhile, has been at work for… god knows how long, he’s rumpled and tired and in between one freshly finished crisis and the start of another up and takes one look at Bond’s meager offering–a cracked transmitter–and just… lets everything drop
  * His shoulders droop and his face falls and even his hands go still and he glances up at Bond, who looks satisfyingly confused, and looks away just as quickly. He sniffles
  * Bond is  _horrified_
  * Q works himself up good and proper (”No, just go away, Bond, I’m  _fine_ , just go and leave me with this mess,  _it’s fine”)_  and then suddenly Bond is gathering him into his arms, which - what?
  * This is not what Q expected at all, but then Bond is kissing the tears on his cheeks, soft and careful, and it’s really nice, but not at all what Q was going for. He almost feels bad, except he really was kind of upset and he’s not actually a crier usually, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have used a hug or something, so he just… kind of lets it happen
  * Bond promises to try a little harder and  _that’s_  what Q was going for, so he leans in and kisses Bond properly and it’s lovely
  * Q gets all his equipment back for two missions before Bond realizes he was faking it, and Q just sighs and kisses every weapon and gadget goodbye for the remainder of Bond’s time as a field agent (he doesn’t mind quite as much, though, because he also gets to kiss Bond goodbye, and kiss him hello and basically kiss him whenever, which is nice)



**Cooking/Baking**

  * Q was a very busy child. Lots of energy and curiosity and always wanting for something to do. Once he was tall enough to see over the counter, his mother began to teach him how to cook. It was a win-win, keeping Q busy and helping his mother out
  * Q took to it with gusto. He helped his mother make dinner every night he finished his homework in time (most nights) and helped her bake things on the weekends
  * He enjoyed baking more than cooking, as it tended to involve more precise measurements and yielded things like warm bread and soft coconut macaroons, but he would do either
  * As Q got older and money got a little tighter around the house and his mother had to work longer hours, he took over cooking dinner almost completely, and still made sweet things on the weekends when there was more time
  * Busy as he was with all his schoolwork and side jobs repairing things for people and soaking up everything he could about computers any time he was able to lay hands on one, Q always tried to make time to cook something; it calmed him down like nothing else
  * Even once he went away to uni and was staying in the dorms, Q found inventive ways of cooking good meals with whatever tiny appliances he was allowed to have, and gained quite a reputation for always having the best food
  * Older now, with his own space and enough money to buy whatever tools and ingredients he wants, Q generally makes whatever takes his fancy as a way to de-stress. He favors complicated dishes and desserts, but nothing quite brings him peace like a simple batch of coconut macaroons



Bonus:

  * Q’s mother seemed to be in the best mood when she was cooking, so Q took a chance and came out to her one evening while they were cooking dinner
  * He was 14 and nervous as hell but determined to tell her because this was  _him_  and once the words came out, all rushed but clear, she just patted him on the cheek, thanked him for telling her, and told him not to let the potatoes boil over
  * He was so relieved that it took him hours to realize she’d left a big, floury hand print on his face



**Cooking/Baking Part 2**

  * Q enjoys baking, but cannot eat an entire batch of biscuits or a whole cake by himself, and so does the only logical thing: feeds Q branch
  * He considered keeping it a secret at first, but didn’t bother in the end. It seemed like too much work (and he was maybe just a tiny bit more bothered by the rumors of him being a robot going around than he let on, and figured having a hobby that humanized him a little wouldn’t be a bad thing)
  * He does not take requests, but he does have mysterious ways of knowing just what a person likes best and tends to bring it in for their birthday if he has the time. Everyone worries that if they acknowledge this practice, it’ll stop, so no one says anything, but Q will occasionally get an extra bright smile for his efforts
  * To be clear: confections are meant for Q branch only. Q branch works hard and they deserve something nice. Also Q is the one making them and he’s  _in charge_  of Q branch, so he gets to decide who gets to eat the things he makes
  * Mallory is obviously welcome to whatever Q brings in. Tanner is, also, because Tanner sometimes brings Q food and is possibly the only sane person at MI6 and deserves a reward. Moneypenny is scary and also Q’s friend, so she gets to eat what he makes. That’s it. No other departments are allowed to eat Q branch’s food
  * This includes agents.This means it was only a matter of time before people started using baked goods as bribes for the agents to be on better behavior. The effectiveness of this is spotty at best, but everyone knows that 004 will jump through hoops for Q’s green tea cake, and that 009 will at least make an effort for cranberry orange muffins
  * Everyone realized Bond and Q were probably together when Bond took a scone from the break room without asking and lightning didn’t strike him where he stood



**Physical Contact - Bond**

  * Bond doesn’t have family or… really any friends, so most of the physical contact he gets is either of the negative sort (physical violence while on mission) or of the sexual sort (on and off missions)
  * Off mission, when he really, really needs to feel another person, he’ll either call one of his casual partners or go out and pick someone up. Sexual contact isn’t really what he’s after, but he doesn’t have another way of getting what he wants
  * After they finish, though, he’ll pull them close and let them curl up in his arms and they’ll be a little surprised because “ _you don’t seem like a cuddler”_  but they’ll fall asleep there
  * Bond won’t sleep, he can’t really sleep well when there are people he doesn’t know nearby, but he feels a lot more content and grounded just feeling the weight of another person, soft and comfortable against him
  * Once he starts getting closer to Tanner and Eve, he gets a little more casual contact - pats on the back, friendly hugs, just someone leaning into his side a little, that sort of thing. It’s weird at first, but he gets to quite liking it
  * When Bond starts getting closer to Q, he realizes that Q is desperately in need of physical contact, but doesn’t know how to ask for it, so Bond is the one who starts initiating casual touches. Once they get together, there is a lot of casual affection between them, because Bond understands the need for that
  * He absolutely does not see the irony. Almost refuses to see the similarities between himself and Q in that regard. Q is obviously touch-starved, Bond just… sometimes really, really wants to be near another person. That’s all. Obviously.



**Physical Contact - Q**

  * Q’s family was pretty tactile - lots of hugs and patting and hair-ruffling; that sort of thing. Once he moved away from home, he got a lot less of that, and once the last of his family is gone, there really isn’t anyone else to get that sort of contact from. He feels the absence of it keenly, but there isn’t much for him to do about it
  * He’s not against going out and picking someone up for a one night stand now and then, but that’s an incredibly brief reprieve. He’ll get as much contact in as he can from whatever guy he picks up, but the night has to end, and it’s not really like he has time for a relationship
  * Beyond that, he apparently projects a very large personal bubble, which only gets worse once he’s made quartermaster. People will shake his hand, but that’s really about it. People seem to think he doesn’t  _want_  to be touched and he doesn’t know how to correct them, so he doesn’t
  * When he and Bond start getting closer, Bond breaks right into his personal bubble and initiates all sorts of casual touches and, later, physical affection. It’s weird at first, but Q decides it’s possibly the best thing that’s happened to him in a lot time
  * Even after they enter into a relationship, there’s a lot of casual contact - hugs and cuddling, yes, but also just hands on arms and arms over shoulders and little nudges and just casually invading one another’s personal space when they can get away with it
  * Q recognizes that Bond needs it just as much as he does. Bond will never admit to being a bit touch-starved, but he is
  * Once people see Bond invading Q’s personal space, some of them are a bit less wary of doing it. Eve ruffles his hair, Mallory pats him on the back, and Tanner gives the best hugs, you don’t even know (not at work, but it’s not a night out unless Tanner gives Q a hug, it’s now tradition)



**Sleep**

  * Q’s never needed a lot of sleep. He’s genuinely able to function acceptably on four or five hours and run at peak efficiency on six. It’s always baffled people
  * He does, however, need  _some_  sleep, and he’s never been good at sleeping. He doesn’t like to slow down or stop what he’s doing. He rarely actually feels sleepy until he’s about to fall asleep, and has been known to stay awake for up to two days because he just forgets it’s been a while since he’s been to bed
  * In an effort to combat this, he’s made his bed as comfortable and inviting as possible. It’s covered in at least half a dozen blankets and a veritable mountain of pillows, in all shapes and colors and textures. Q doesn’t so much get into bed as he nests, and he kind of loves it
  * He doesn’t have a TV in his bedroom, but he does have a truly excellent sound system, which he uses for soft music or soundscapes. He absolutely, 100%  _cannot_  sleep in the silence. Logically, he knows he isn’t really hearing anything, but his mind projects all sorts of noise - everything from tapping keys to screaming
  * Another great thing about Q’s bed, he thinks, is that it always has at least one cat in it. This maybe isn’t great if he has a guest, but it is if he has a nightmare. If he feels around enough, he knows he’ll find a cat, and sometimes petting them is enough to send him back to sleep
  * When Q truly wants to sleep, but can’t, the same thing will never work twice in a row to combat his insomnia. He codes, invents, bakes, cleans, takes baths, drinks tea, reads, plays with the cats, runs on the treadmill, even once drove to work to use the pool. Whatever finally sends him off won’t work the next time, and he’s never managed to work out why
  * Bond is very skeptical about Q’s fancy, fluffy bed at first, but comes around pretty quickly. He doubts if he would sleep in it on his own, but Q always manages to arrange it so they’re perfectly cradled in the middle, with enough room that they’re not squished together, but close enough that they can feel each other side by side. Eventually, Bond thinks he might sleep better in Q’s bed than anywhere else he’s ever slept (though he’s pretty sure this has more to do with the fact that Q is usually in it)



**Reverse!AU - Quartermaster Bond**

  * Bond, initially agent 007, has actually always had an interest in technology. He’s excellent with it, and made great friends with Boothroyd because of this. He would sometimes come down to Q branch between missions just to help test equipment and give feedback, or even assist on a few projects
  * Unfortunately early in his 00 career, Bond receives an injury that takes him entirely out of the field and leaves him with a permanent limp. He’s devastated; convinced that his life is over
  * His life isn’t over, however, and he needs to do something to fill his recovery time, so he begins to work with his computer. It’s probably the area he’s weakest on, as far as technology goes; he’s always loved weapons and cars and chemicals, but cyberspace was less tangible and he made less time for it. Now, he excels at it
  * When he’s mobile again, he comes back to headquarters and basically installs himself in Q branch. Boothroyd has no complaints, merrily engaging him in conversation and giving him work to do. M (very secretly hopeful for Bond’s recovery) approves Bond’s transfer into the division
  * Bond throws himself into the work and is pleasantly surprised to find that his life did not, in fact, end when he lost his ability to go into the field. He does turn out to be rather good at organizing missions and will sometimes run comms, though he has a preference for work in R&D
  * Bond quickly works up to a position as R (though he still just goes by James Bond, because some things don’t change) and is content to stay there. He doesn’t spend as much time working with agents in this posting, but he’s alright with that because, even though he’s quite happy with his life as is, he does sometimes just really miss fieldwork
  * However, after a tragic accident (or is it?), Boothroyd is killed, and Bond is promoted to Q. He’s quick to adapt, and takes the time to familiarize himself with some of the agents he’ll now be working more closely with, including one of their youngest 00 agents ever, 0017



**Reverse!AU - 00 Agent Q**

  * Q - agent 0017, that is, though usually just 17 for short because he hardly ever goes by his real name at headquarters (most people are certain it’s a fake name anyway), was initially recruited with an eye towards putting him in Q branch. There was something a little too unsettled about him to put him behind a desk, though, even in a department as active as Q branch could be
  * Instead, seeing how competently ruthless he could be in the mandatory self defense classes, his destination is changed to fieldwork. The higher ups who decide this is a good idea talk about a new class of agent, one who can break through a firewall as effectively as they can kick down a door
  * Q just kind of rolls with it, because why the hell not? His life before MI6 was heading in a very bad direction; this is sort of his second and last chance. The danger doesn’t bother him, it can’t be much worse than where he was, and if he goes down, well - at least he went down doing something good for his country, right?
  * Q is actually an excellent field agent. He’s generally unassuming and easily passed over or dismissed when he wants to be, but able to hold his own physically as well as mentally; he tends to be sent on a lot of missions involving technology, but he rather enjoys the chance to work with it, in any case
  * He becomes one of the youngest agents to earn a 00 designation. A lot of people question this decision on M’s part, but his performance gives people little reason to argue with his appointment (not that he doesn’t break rules or go off map, he just tends to be very sneaky about it)
  * Despite never making it to Q branch, Q ends up pretty good friends with Boothroyd anyway; Q has a little more respect for the kits he’s issued than some agents and, when he can’t save something, he usually comes back with constructive feedback on how to make it more durable/functional. Boothroyd fosters hopes of pulling Q into his branch the way he did Bond
  * When Boothroyd dies in an accident (or is it?), Q is actually quite beaten up about it and is, perhaps, a little less friendly with his new quartermaster than he could be; he’s never really dealt with James Bond, usually ending up with Boothroyd or a different handler, and is wary of this new person. But it seems Bond is hellbent on being a very involved quartermaster



**Q/Tanner**

  *  isn’t sure what to do with Tanner at first. He’s so used to be people either sniping at him or acting as if they’re better than him because they’re older or bigger or think they’re more experienced. Tanner doesn’t do any of those things; he’s as honest with Q as he’s able to be and seems content with Q’s company and Q is just so confused
  * That’s not to say that Tanner can’t be sarcastic. He’s very sarcastic and Q loves it. They’ve spent hours making dry remarks at  _other_  things, just not at each other. It’s surprisingly fun
  * Tanner, on the other hand, is kind of smitten with Q’s enthusiasm. It’s been a long time since he’s seen someone so openly  _pleased_  with how they get to spend their time. It helps that Q is really very good at his job, too (really, who gets to a position as high up as Tanner’s without developing a little thing for competence?)
  * When they’ve actually started dating, they tend to stay in more than anything. Their jobs are both very high stress and they don’t often really want to go out in public and be presentable and have to be on alert; they’re more than happy cooking dinner and watching films and things off the DVR on the couch
  * Q mostly cooks dinner. Tanner isn’t actually very good at cooking. He tries very hard, but he ends up burning most everything and will usually eat it anyway because he is, according to Q, a heathen. Mostly, Q assigns him easy tasks to help with because he just likes having Tanner in the kitchen when he cooks
  * Tanner does know the best takeaway places, though, and he’ll order in on nights when he and Q are both stuck working late, or when they’re much too tired to cook anything. He likes surprising Q with new things and is pretty excellent at guessing what Q will like
  * Though Tanner’s place is actually closer to work, they usually end up at Q’s house so the cats won’t be alone and because Q has a bigger bed. Why they need a bigger bed when Q usually ends up octopussed around Tanner by morning, Tanner has no idea, but it  _is_  a nice bed, he’ll admit



**Reuse, Recycle**

  * Since Q’s family didn’t have much money, he grew up learning to use things to death. He wore his shoes until they absolutely fell apart, his clothes were always repurposed when he didn’t fit into them anymore, anything that broke was generally taped back together if it wasn’t a lost cause, and anything they really couldn’t use anymore but was still in good condition was donated
  * In this mindset, Q learned to repair things when he was quite young. When their old radio broke and no amount of smacking and/or battery replacement could make it work again, Q located a screwdriver and took a look inside. After some trial and error, he managed to get it to play, and was enamored of the idea of fixing up other things after that
  * He even earned some side money fixing things for neighbors and classmates when he got a bit older. The building manager was somewhat less surly with him than with other tenants because Q managed to save him a decent amount of money on repairs
  * Q is actually fairly decent at sewing. He can’t make his own clothes, but he can make neat and clean repairs and patches, courtesy of both his mother’s and grandmother’s teaching (and years of doing it himself once he was away from home)
  * Even though he makes more than enough money to replace things that break or wear out now, Q still can’t bring himself to throw away something that he could potentially reuse or fix; a lot of the things in his house are recycled, from cat toys made from old socks to gadgets made with cannibalized electronic parts
  * This is why Q tends to get frustrated when agents either completely lose their kit, or bring back something unsalvageable - it’s not so much the money (though he  _does_  have to keep an eye on his department’s budget, unfortunately) as it is the fact that there’s nothing for him to reuse or repair. It bothers him
  * While sometimes old food can be made into something new (stale bread into French toast or bread pudding, overripe bananas into banana bread), Q will admit defeat on expired food. If it’s gone off, it’s gone off. One instance of food poisoning after stubbornly attempting to use expired milk was more than enough



**Felix/Q**

  * Q comes to Langley to visit with his CIA counterpart and attend a few speaking engagements. Felix is tasked with showing him around (babysitting. he’s babysitting) because this is MI6′s Very Important Geek and if anything happens to him, England will be  _pissed_
  * Also, they sent Bond as his security and Bond’s not know for playing well with others, but he and Felix get along, so hey, Felix gets the job
  * Felix is surprised to find he actually likes Q pretty well. He’s practical and well-spoken, firm in his convictions, but willing to listen to other people’s opinions, and has a supremely dry sense of humor that meshes pretty well with Felix’s
  * (Puns notwithstanding. But it’s a little endearing how Q will laugh at his own jokes when no one else will. Even Bond doesn’t seem to mind it much, which is how Felix justifies the little smile it gives him)
  * And then they hit the firing range to test out a few new things and Felix finds out that Q can  _shoot_
  * Like, really well
  * And he compliments Felix’s gun, commends him on his good taste, and well- Felix decides he wouldn’t mind spending a little more time up close and personal with Q
  * He also decides that Q needs feeding up. Much too skinny. He’s pretty sure Bond sort of laughs at this, but Felix ignores him because he’s  _allowed_  to want to feed people up. It’s a Southern thing
  * Taking his babysitting/guide duties very seriously, Felix takes Bond and Q to an excellent steakhouse (can’t come to America and not have a steak, after all) and is gratified to see Q’s bemusement at the huge portions
  * He’s then a bit bemused himself when Q manages to put all of it away (and then understands why Bond was laughing at him)
  * It all culminates with drinks in Q’s hotel room and a fairly serviceable line about how everything is bigger in the States and then Felix gets to find out that, in addition to his numerous other talents, Q gives the best head on  _either_  side of the Pacific
  * (He’s also not adverse to moaning Felix’s name, which is a big point in his favor; Felix loves hearing his voice go low and loud like that, and it’s definitely worth the combination smug/perturbed looks Bond shoots him the next morning)
  * (How does he even get his face to do that?)
  * All in all, it’s a lovely experience and they wouldn’t be adverse to repeating it, but make no active plans to do so. It wouldn’t really be practical
  * All the same, Felix pays a little more attention to future talk of inter-agency cooperation. Just in case



**Renaissance Faire AU**

  * Bond is one of the knights. Sometimes people forget there are even other knights, because Bond has a tendency to steal the show when participating in tournaments. The other knights are quite good, of course, but it’s just… well, Bond
  * Q plays the part of the prince. He wanted to be a wizard, but that was vetoed, which he felt wasn’t particularly fair, given the fact they have a flock of fairies, and even offered to be an alchemist instead, but Tanner was already fitting him for a circlet because they  _needed_  a prince, come on, Q. Q gave in
  * M is the queen. They never have a king and that’s perfectly alright with them
  * Moneypenny is in charge of the fairies. This is basically the best decision anyone at the faire has ever made. Moneypenny is fucking enchanting. She might actually be a fairy, they’re not sure
  * Mallory always dresses as a pirate. Not quite accurate, but he’s seriously the best-dressed pirate ever. Like, ever. His costume is amazing. He’s also really good at directing people and organizing things, so they keep him around
  * Tanner is in charge of the performers. He makes sure everything runs smoothly, from personal issues to costume snags (he is quite honestly a magician with a needle or sewing machine). Everyone adores Tanner, and Tanner adores everyone right back, in an exasperated sort of way that involves eye-rolling and sometimes needles
  * Since they don’t have a princess, the knights compete for the favor of the prince. Obviously it’s not really historically accurate, but they’re all pretty alright with it. Bond takes this competition very seriously, and they’ve started scripting in some wins of his, because Sir Bond’s “clandestine romance” with Prince Q has become rather popular
  * Silva played their Black Knight for a while, but took his role  _far_ too seriously, creeped out pretty much everyone, and eventually began to attempt to drum up support for him playing the part of king ( _without_  the queen). It didn’t work and, after some dramatic happenings, he was banned from ever setting foot in the faire again. They still tell stories about their Black Knight, though, and about how he’ll be back to settle the score (these stories distinctly unsettle M and Q in particular, though neither of them much let it show)



**(Cursed) Circus AU**

  * Mallory is the ringmaster. He’s very dapper in a top hat and tails, and he absolutely commands the audience’s attention. No one can quite look away from him while he’s talking, and that’s just the way it should be. Let the show set up behind him – when they’re ready, he’ll give them the audience
  * Q is the fortune teller. He mostly just does readings before and after the show, but sometimes he’ll perform. It’s nothing particularly flashy, but it’s captivating all the same: people say that he can read minds. That he knows what you’re thinking, no matter what, and that you can’t hide anything from him, nothing – his show is unsettling, and it always leaves people a bit dazed
  * Bond and Moneypenny perform on the trapeze. They never have a net – isn’t life more fun that way? With nothing to catch you, any move could be your last. You need to be sure. Their show is always dazzling; people watch on the edge of their seats, gasping every time Moneypenny catches Bond by what seems like just the tips of his fingers
  * Moneypenny really didn’t catch him once. The audience screamed as Bond went plummeting to the ground, and then – and then Mallory stepped in and suddenly there was nothing. Q was summoned, and then the audience went home. No one could quite remember the show clearly, but they were sure it was fantastic
  * Whatever went on in the big top that night was unholy, but the circus was touring again soon
  * Moneypenny and Bond separated their act for a bit after that; Moneypenny threw knives, Bond breathed fire, and it took a while for Moneypenny to regain her confidence (and for Bond to stop making sarcastic quips about the incident) but eventually they began their trapeze act again
  * Tanner is the strong man. He doesn’t look like much, but it doesn’t do well to underestimate him; he could probably carry the entire cast of the circus on his shoulders if he had to. For his performance, they play it up like it’s a curse – doomed to break everything and everyone he touches, but really, he hasn’t broken anyone in… oh, months, probably
  * Sometimes he’ll participate in Bond and Moneypenny’s act and catch them when they jump from the high platforms. Sometimes he’ll carry Q around on his shoulders, mostly because Q can’t stop him



**Hugs**

  * Moneypenny hugs like she’s trying to squish you a little bit. She can be gentle, but believes that real, good hugs involve as much squeezing as possible. It’s a little comforting once you’re used to it
  * Mallory’s Hugs usually get a capital “H” because they are very rare and special. They are definitely mom friend hugs - usually there for you when you really need comfort
  * Bond hugs like the world is ending. It feels like he’s trying to shield you from the entire world, like this is the last time you’ll ever get to hug, like this hug is the only thing in the world he needs. They can overwhelming, but are just perfect when you really need to know someone is there
  * Q hugs like he’s not sure he’s supposed to be doing it. You sort of get the feeling he knew how to give good hugs at one point in his life, like that muscle memory is still there, because when he forgets himself they’re just perfect, but the rest of the time they’re just a little too light and a tiny bit awkward
  * Tanner gives the best hugs. This is objective Fact. No one can quite put their finger on what it is about Tanner’s hugs that is The Best, they just are. Sky is up, rain comes from clouds, Tanner gives the best hugs



**Mallory/Q**

  * Mallory is actually a very secret cuddler. It surprised Q at first, and he didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as he does, but it’s nice, having someone just a little bit bigger than him just hold him him the way Mallory does; Mallory loves the way Q fits against him (like he’s supposed to be there, Mallory might think, if he were a romantic)
  * Q likes to experiment in bed (not terribly surprising); Mallory doesn’t mind, as such, but he’s also a fan of routine and has his favorite acts/positions. They manage to compromise; not every experiment works out, but they never regret trying
  * Mallory is one of the few people authorized to know Q’s real name, and takes full advantage of that fact; Q loves being Q, but he also likes hearing Mallory call him by his name, and Q calls him Gareth in kind
  * They both know Mallory will eventually have to retire, the way Mansfield was meant to be put out to pasture, and that this will happen long before Q is ready to give up MI6 (if he ever gives it up), but they’re sort of avoiding discussing it
  * When they do manage dates, they don’t actually go out much, as they would present too large a target combined, but for one anniversary, when they both somehow manage the night off, Mallory pulls some strings and gets them an excellent security detail so they can enjoy dinner at a nice restaurant
  * Otherwise, they’ll stay in and cook or get takeaway and enjoy a quiet evening together, or just skip food completely and head straight to the bedroom or nearest available surface (and christ, Mallory hasn’t felt this young in years)
  * They’ve managed to go stretches of days without speaking to each other on more than professional matters (or at all, even), they both work odd hours and are constantly on call, but they know that, besides the job, they are the most important thing to one another, and they manage to make it work



-/-/-

Hey can I shout about bipolar!Q for a minute?

Like, he knew something was up but didn’t seek help for a long time because he  _liked_  being manic. He really did. He got so much done! He barely had to sleep and wasn’t bothered by hunger and his place was always clean and he always felt so creative and would just go and go and go for days because he was  _invincible_

And when he was depressed, well - well, no, that wasn’t great, but he did have the hyperfocus thing going for him. He could sit in front of his computer for literal hours just coding, and it got to the point where manic him would just try to write down any ideas he didn’t have the attention span for because as long as it was well-outlined, depressed him would be able to complete it. It was a good system. Of course, he didn’t have much of an appetite when he was depressed and things never really got clean (taking a shower was hard enough, and even that got nixed some days) and he vacillated between sleeping for 14 hours at a time and struggling with insomnia and everything just felt kind of horrible all the time, but eventually the mania came back and then it was okay

Sure, some of the things he did were definitely illegal and almost definitely dangerous, but he was always good enough to pull it off. (And by the end of a manic episode, when he really wasn’t at his best and likely wasn’t good enough to pull much of anything off, he was usually too scattered and frustrated to start anything anyway)

He might have continued that way indefinitely, because there was no one around to know there was something really wrong but him, and he certainly wasn’t going to do anything about it, but then MI6 happened. M happened, more specifically. When he hacked in and left his CV for them to find in a fit of cockiness, M agreed to hire him on the condition that he accepted treatment for “whatever the hell was wrong with him.” Which, yeah, fair.

It took a while and a lot of frustration, but Q did eventually find an acceptable combination of medication and an approved therapist he didn’t mind talking to. He still struggled with insomnia and with his lack of appetite, but loved his job enough that he really tried to stick to his treatment (and he figured M must have approved of his progress in some way, because she eventually made him quartermaster)

Okay, I’m done, thanks

-/-/-

Okay, so we’ve had Bond asking Moneypenny for advice on how to get with Q because Moneypenny and Q are best buds, right?

But what about Tanner pestering Q on how the heck he’s supposed to impress Moneypenny? Like, what’s her favorite flower? Or her favorite color, actually. Oh! What about shoes? Does Q know her shoe size? Would that be weird? Only Eve’s got a lot of nice shoes and Tanner fancies he hasn’t got a horrible sense of style, but maybe that would be too weird…

And Q is just pulling his hair out because he likes Tanner, he really does, and he adores Eve and Eve deserves someone nice like Tanner and Q doesn’t want to be discouraging but he’s  _trying to work_. No, Tanner, he and Moneypenny do not talk about things like flowers and shoes, alright? Her favorite ice cream is rocky road, her favorite handgun is a Glock, and Q is  _fucking busy._

And Tanner kinda droops, but yeah, Q is right, they should be working, he’s just so excited and he really wants to do something nice for Eve, but Q is right. Working. Very important.

And now Q feels  _bad_ , so he sighs and tells Tanner to get Moneypenny some fancy pens. People are always stealing her pens and it’s made her rather possessive over them, and she hoards her favorite ones like a dragon in a locked drawer of her desk. You know you’ve gotten her a good one if she throws it in her drawer and you never see it again.

Tanner is delighted with the advice and gets Moneypenny a really nice carved wooden pen and Moneypenny is delighted with it and she shows it off to Q when they next have lunch at her desk (and she then locks it right back up because Q is a horrific pen thief, made all the worse by the fact he barely even  _uses_  pens, what is he doing with all the pens he steals, honestly) and Q congratulates himself on advice well-given and congratulates Moneypenny on her upcoming date with Tanner (and tries to find out what Moneypenny’s favorite flower is, because Tanner’s probably gonna keep asking him until he finds out)

-/-/-

Bond is so used to Q just being “Q”, that he sometimes forgets Q really isn’t his name, but a designation. Q is short for quartermaster, and every once in a while, Bond will have a moment of dissonance while they’re at home, where he stops seeing Q, his lover and partner and flatmate, and sees the quartermaster, the tech genius and weapons expert of MI6

And he sees the quartermaster standing in the middle of the kitchen in his pants and one of Bond’s old t-shirts, hair standing entirely on end from sleep, staring blearily at a box of cereal and a spoon and trying to figure out what steps he’s missing here, because he’s very much not awake yet, and Bond will just have to laugh

And Q will squint over at him and just be Q again, until they get to work and he’s the quartermaster again, and everything will be divided as it should be. (Though Bond will absolutely save the image in his mind for the next time he really needs something to smile about)


	33. Bonus Chapter: Plotbunnies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some expanded plot ideas on some of the AU's from earlier chapters (plus a few I didn't write anything more for). Some pairings, some gen, varying levels of seriousness

**Space AU**

Not just any space AU. This AU is about SPACE OUTLAWS. Because I really wanted to

  * Q’s people were fairly peaceful and painfully curious. They were able to connect telepathically with technology and when invaders came to their world, this skill was considered a hot commodity. They were ill prepared to fight back and were largely captured or wiped out. Q was pretty young when this all happened and managed to escape unnoticed with a few other refugees
  * Q grew up bouncing around from world to world, afraid to stay in one place lest someone discover what he was. He took in a lot of information during that time, interfacing with all sorts of different technology. He was determined not to be defenseless should anyone ever try to take him and, in addition to learning how to defend himself, learned a great deal about weapons. He’s become something of an expert
  * Eve’s people were nomadic. They lived spread throughout the galaxy in small groups. She grew up amid many peoples, learning different languages and cultures, raised collectively by the clan she traveled with. It wasn’t always a stable existence, but it was a fairly happy one until her clan’s ship was destroyed – collateral in a war fought by the reigning government of the galaxy, which her people had no part in
  * By then, Eve was of a dozen different cultures, she knew their languages and their ways and, even if she didn’t always blend in, she knew exactly how to act as though she belonged. She was cunning and determined to undermine the authority that had gotten her family killed. Along the way to something bigger, she became a very adept smuggler, with connections on almost every world in the galaxy
  * Bond’s parents were killed when he was still rather young and, with an uncertain future, he stowed away in the hold of a ship going offworld. When he was inevitably discovered, rather than either turning him in or killing him, the crew decided to keep him. They weren’t always the nicest, but they weren’t unduly cruel, and taught him everything they knew about interstellar travel. Eventually Bond moved on, catching different ships at different ports and learning everything they had to teach him
  * It was largely ships of the unsavory sort that took him on, willing to leave him as an undocumented member and pay him under the table; in this way, he learned a rather more specific skillset than just ship work – he learned how to lie and cheat and steal, he learned how to fight, how to kill when his life depended on it, how to bribe and sneak and get what he wanted by whatever means necessary. He did manage to get together enough money for his own ship eventually, and reveled in the freedom to take or turn down whichever jobs he wanted
  * Somehow, Eve, Q, and Bond all band together to become SPACE OUTLAWS. Q acts as their navigator and weapons and demolition expert, Eve is sort of their face – their translator and the one with all the connections, and Bond is the pilot and general odd job man – he does whatever he thinks a job calls for, whether that means being the muscle or having some finesse
  * Mallory is the long-suffering officer tasked with capturing the three of them and Tanner is his even more long-suffering partner



**Reincarnation AU**

Time to make Bond sad! Warnings for character death because… reincarnation

  * Bond is immortal. Sort of an eternal warrior type. He’s been around since the Celts and he imagines he’ll be around long after they’re completely forgotten
  * There are many types of immortality in the world; Bond’s sort has to do with being completely unable to die. His body can be damaged, but he will heal and come back, no matter what
  * So Bond does his warrior thing for a hundred years, two hundred, and then he meets Q
  * Q is the most brilliant person Bond has ever met. He is so very smart and creative, enthusiastic and sweet, yet still cunning and sharp. Bond falls in love
  * He is convinced the Gods put Q onto the earth just for him, for how perfect Q is
  * Except Q isn’t immortal
  * And Q dies
  * Bond is devastated. He curses the Gods; how dare they give him a creature such as Q and then rip him away? Hadn’t he served them well enough for decades? Centuries?
  * He renounces them and renounces his duty and hides away for a while. A few decades maybe. Eventually he realizes he kind of needs a purpose and rejoins the world
  * But as he’s out reacquainting himself with whatever civilization he finds himself nearest, he thinks he must have lost his mind after going for a while in isolation, because he thinks he sees Q
  * But it turns out it actually  _is_  Q
  * But it isn’t?
  * This Q doesn’t answer to the name Bond knew him by. He doesn’t remember Bond in the slightest. His mind and face are the same, but he’s not  _exactly_  the Q Bond had loved
  * Turns out Q  _is_  immortal, just in a different way than Bond; he’s the sort of immortal that reincarnates – the same spirit born again and again, too stubborn to quit, even when the body fails
  * It doesn’t matter to Bond what sort of immortality it is, just that it  _is_. He immediately sets about getting to know Q again. They fall in love. They have a slightly longer run than the first time before Q dies again
  * It’s… it’s actually just as devastating as the first time. Bond thought it might be easier, because he knows Q will be back, but the thought doesn’t really soothe him as he watches the light leave Q’s eyes
  * But he does know that Q will be back, and so he waits
  * Across a few lifetimes, he realizes that Q looks a little different. That his face has changed, subtly, from incarnation to incarnation.  He doesn’t look the same as he did when Bond first knew him, but he never changes enough to be unrecognizable to Bond
  * Across a few more lifetimes, Bond accepts that Q will never remember him
  * Across a few more after that, he realizes that, though Q’s mind doesn’t remember him, his spirit seems to. He’s always drawn to Bond, even if he doesn’t understand why. It’s not much, but it’s enough for Bond
  * For centuries, millennia, Bond searches out Q. He tends to pop up around Britain, but sometimes he’s elsewhere. Bond always manages to find him
  * Bond never stops loving Q, never stops looking, even when some incarnations of Q don’t love him back. Even when he just misses one, is too late to catch Q before death claims him again
  * Bond does make an effort to have a life, though. He’ll have a job and a house and even some friends, no matter how short-lived they are. He tends to leave most of it behind when the most recent incarnation of Q dies, moving on to start over and wait somewhere new, because it’s still heart-wrenching, no matter how many times it’s happened
  * Bond’s not really sure where or if it all ends, but he hopes that when (if) it does, he and Q will be together, as in love as they were those many, many, many years ago



**Little Shop of Horrors AU**

So I have a whole bunch of AU’s sitting in my files, but for some reason decided to write about a Little Shop of Horrors AU instead? I guess?? (warnings for reference to domestic abuse, murder, and a plant that eats people)

  * Bond was injured and invalided out from the Navy. He didn’t have much after that – few skills to speak of outside of military work (as far as potential employers were concerned, anyway) and a slightly diminished range of motion from the wound to his shoulder
  * He ends up renting a flat above a flower shop on  ~~skid row~~  in a really shitty part of London and then ends up getting a job in the shop. He takes up horticulture as something to fill the time and gains a particular interest in strange and interesting plants
  * The only other employee at the shop, besides the owner, is a young man who goes only by “Q.” He works with technology and is really quite good, doing everything from network security to hardware maintenance, but for some reason he doesn’t really get much business, hence his job at the flower shop
  * Q is handsome and brilliant and kind of irritating, but in a way that really interests Bond. Bond would ask him out, but honestly? The kid deserves better than some washed-up veteran with a job in a shitty flower shop. Q is young and he could really go places
  * He  _would_  go places, as soon as he dumped that piece of shit boyfriend of his, Raoul Silva. Silva does something shady with computers, as far as Bond can tell. Silva also hits Q, Bond is sure of it, but the one time Bond tried to comment on the bruises, Q told him it was consensual and completely shut down (Bond doesn’t think it’s particularly consensual, but he also knows he could make things worse for Q by poking around, so he drops it for the time being)
  * On Bond’s day off, he’s out perusing some of the usual shops where he buys exotic plants and finds something very interesting just sort of stuck in where it doesn’t seem to belong. He can’t really identify it and can’t seem to keep it healthy, but he keeps trying, and since he doesn’t know what it’s called, he dubs it “Q the 2nd” (Q tells him this an utterly ridiculous name for a plant, but he’s blushing as he says it; Bond tells him he named the plant thus because it’s been irritating the hell out of him, which is actually true)
  * He calls the plant “Jr.” for short, which Q tells him is even more ridiculous, but when they start displaying Jr. and their business picks up ridiculously quickly, he and Q start to wonder about the draw that plant has
  * Later, once Jr. has started talking and convincing Bond to feed him, Bond finds out for certain that Silva is hitting Q (and that Q is most certainly not inviting it); Bond goes to confront Silva under the guise of a consultation on what sort of network to outfit the flower shop with. He finds out that Silva has also been squashing any notice Q’s work may have been getting, to keep Q under his thumb
  * Really, Bond  _wants_ to shoot Silva, but he hesitates because he’s never just… killed someone in cold blood before. A freak accident with Silva’s equipment takes the choice out of Bond’s hands, and he feeds Silva to Jr. with little more than a general feeling of “well this is fucked up”
  * The rest of it pretty much follows the same path as the movie, I think; James and Jr. will become quite famous, it turns out Jr.’s trying to take over the world (as all good Bond villains are), Jr. will try to eat Q, fail, and then Bond will kill Jr. with some genius device of Q’s (because Q gets to have a slightly more active role than Audrey), and then they go live in a really nice part of London with the money made off the flower shop’s publicity (but just as flatmates and friends first because Q just got out of a really bad relationship, okay, he doesn’t need to just jump right into another) and go to work for a secret government branch that deals with aliens and stuff and live happily ever after (or something like it, anyway)



**Athletes AU**

Look, high school athletics is the best I can do, okay? Just take cheerleader!Q and leave me alone

  * James is the school’s star footballer
  * Kid’s going places, he’s very good. Already got scouts and everything
  * Thing is, he’s not sure he wants to keep playing football? He loves it, yeah, but… there are other things he wants to do, too
  * Q is a cheerleader
  * Why? Because he needed an extracurricular, okay? And school is just…  _painfully_  easy. It’s so easy and he was so bored and his dear friend Eve extended a challenge to him
  * And cheerleading is a challenge – and he turns out to be pretty darn good at it. He kind of enjoys it
  * Best Friend Eve is also on the squad. Other members include Madeleine (she and Q are study buddies in psychology), Fields (like Q, no one calls her by her first name; she’s a bit serious, but Q is pretty sure she has a thing for Eve), and Camille (exchange student, very intense, but kind beneath all of that)
  * Gareth and Bill are on the football team as well. Gareth is probably going to be picked up for a university team, and he’s pleased with this. Bill doesn’t take it quite as seriously; he’s a great player, but he’s in it more because he enjoys playing – he plans on doing something else at uni
  * James has always been one for hanging around and flirting with the cheerleaders, but suddenly there’s a  _guy_  in their midst and James is ready to take the piss a little except… well, okay, he got kind of distracted by the new guy’s arse while he was going through his routine. Those trousers are very well-fitted
  * He still teases Q, but it’s mostly to make up for the fact that  _shit_  he really thinks Q is attractive
  * Thus begins the back and forth between “meathead” football player James and “airhead” cheerleader Q. There’s lots of teenager-y UST and drama about whether James is going to go on to play football at uni or if he’s going to follow his other dreams~ and dude I don’t even know I’m pretty sure this still counts as an athlete AU??



**Royalty AU**

Sort of inspired by my Renaissance Faire AU, but different? This is so dramatic

  * Q is the son and only living heir of the late Queen Emma
  * Q isn’t his real name, he wouldn’t dare go by his real name; he’s in hiding, you see
  * Queen Emma fell when the lost heir to the Oberhauser name—long thought dead—returned to the kingdom under the assumed name of Blofeld and took the castle by force with insidious dark magic
  * With the assistance of the royal adviser and two of Q’s friends—James and William, both squires at the time, both a bit older than him, though Q had long since advanced to their level in academic lessons—Q managed to escape the castle before he was taken and killed
  * Gareth, the royal adviser, took responsibility for Q when it became clear Queen Emma had not survived the assault; they had to go into hiding – it was of the greatest importance that Q survive until his 18th birthday, when he could reclaim the throne from Blofeld
  * James and William were unable to return – their absence had been noted, and if they suddenly turned up, they would be declared traitors and cowards, or it would be (rightly) assumed they knew the whereabouts of the missing prince
  * Besides that, they refused to go back and train in the service of “King” Blofeld, so Gareth took them into his care as well
  * The four of them settled into a cottage in the woods, Briar Rose style, out of the way and far beneath anyone’s notice – anyone’s notice except Eve’s
  * Eve was the sprite whose part of the woods they unwittingly settled in; that was, of course, why the cottage had been empty in the first place – Eve didn’t let just anyone live in her territory
  * She took a liking to the four of them, however, and appreciated the fact that Q would be the key to getting Blofeld, whose darkness was already starting to infect the land, out of power; she even fostered Q’s talent in magic so he would have a fighting chance against Blofeld when the time came



**Toys Are Alive AU**

I tried taking this seriously, but it didn’t work. Instead, have this pseudo-Steadfast Tin Solider AU, inspired more by the Disney version, because Hans Christian Andersen was terrible

  * Felix is one of a set of spy action figures (they all come with names like Tiger and Quarrel and all have outlandish stories printed on the packaging). He was improperly molded and came out missing a leg, but still made it into the package
  * The kid who received Felix’s set decided this made Felix extra cool and makes up all sorts of different stories about how Felix lost his leg
  * The current favorite is that he lost it fighting a shark
  * The shark in question is a large-ish plush toy shark, which has soft teeth but is a rather nasty character to work with
  * One day, Felix spots a lovely Ballerina Eve doll in the kid’s sister’s room and falls in love
  * He sneaks off at night to visit with Eve and tells her the many tales of how he lost his leg, and Eve shares with him all the dramatic stories she’s been involved with (most recently she and some of the other Eve dolls became a terrifying tribe of warrior women who beheaded a James doll; her kid is so creative. Felix does his best to always be respectful, particularly upon hearing this)
  * Unfortunately, the shark plush also takes a liking to Eve (everyone loves a dancer, Felix supposes) and in a fit of jealousy, gets Felix thrown into the back garden
  * Felix has a harrowing journey back into the house, involving some very unpleasant squirrels and the dreaded lawnmower, but he makes it back
  * That night, he and Eve square off against the plush shark and throw it where the dog finds it and runs off with it
  * Later, the kids play together and Felix gets to be the rugged agent protecting the popular ballerina dancer, before the ballerina dancer turns out to know karate and saves the day and Felix



**Non-Human AU (Deity AU)**

Bond is the god of impulse  
   -He is the push before the jump from a high place, the lust before a kiss, the tug in your gut that tells you to trust someone even if you know you shouldn’t  
   -He is the rush of euphoria in the moment, the fear and the uncertainty, the surety that you will land on your feet, every decision made on drink, and the flouting of consequence

Q is the god of curiosity  
   -He is innovation and he is restlessness, brilliance and the burn of knowing too much, he is every “what if” on the tip of every tongue  
   -It is he that drives a man to ruin, relentless in pursuit of answers, but it is also he who rewards the pursuit

Eve is the goddess of adaptation  
   -She is the rise to a challenge, the bending over the breaking, the pleasure in an obstacle overcome and the brittle determination in the aftermath of failure  
   -She is in the changes you make to survive, even when it means losing parts of yourself along the way


End file.
